Percieved Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Social Competence and Depression among Tertiary Institution Students in Benue and Nasaraws States, Nigeria

This study investigated the perceived impact of COVID-19 pandemic on social competence and depression adjustment of tertiary institution students in Benue and Nasarawa States, Nigeria. The study was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised 75,289 students in 11 tertiary institutions Benue and Nasarawa States out of which 399 students where sampled using multi-stage sampling procedure. This involved conducting the sampling procedure in stages, with different techniques being adopted at different stages. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled “Covid-19, Academic, Psychosocial Adjustment Questionnaire (CAPAQ)†developed by the researcher. The data collected were analyzed using Mean scores and Standard Deviation to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using chi-square statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on students’ social competence and depression in Benue and Nasarawa States. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that Students should be helped by the teachers and counsellors to become socially competent by acquainting them with social skills like virtual communication, online networking, and digital collaboration skills to go through social problems affecting their social competence due to pandemics like COVID-19. Students should be sensitized through workshops on how to improve their social interaction (e-conferences, online communications) whenever a pandemic strikes, as this could go a long way in reducing the level of isolation felt during social distancing. Counsellors should help students to adopt stress coping strategies so as to avoid depression whenever there is a lockdown or social distancing during pandemics.