Relationship between Locus of Control and Conflict Resolution among Secondary School Students in Eldoret East District, Kenya

Abstract

Conflict is inevitable among people who live together and share a lot of things in common.  Conflict is therefore neutral, natural and normal in organizations. It occurs because individuals are unique and have different opinions, convictions, desires and priorities. Pennebaker (1990) points out that, conflicts are a natural part of life and therefore a natural part of school life.  Learning to deal constructively with conflict is a life-skill students need so that they can learn to resolve their own conflicts so that the atmosphere at school is more pleasant for all. Locus of control on the other hand, refers to a person’s perception of personal control over their own behavior. Rotter (1996) contended that individuals with internal locus of control would continue to engage in activities that would reinforce the expectancy that their behaviors affected subsequent consequences. Essentially individual’s locus of control would impact how they perceived and interacted within their surroundings. When individuals were introduced to novel experiences they would expect to react in a consistent level of cognitive processing. This paper sought to find out the relationship between conflict resolution and locus of control in secondary schools. The study focused on Schools in Eldoret district. Causal comparative (Ex-post facto) design was used in the study. From the results few students who had low levels of locus of control had low levels of conflict resolutions while those with high levels of locus of control had high levels of conflict resolution. However no significant relationship existed between locus of control and conflict resolution at least for this study.

Keywords: relationship, locus of control, conflict resolution