Spousal Selection for Marriage by Tertiary Students in Wa Municipality of Ghana: Internal Factors in Perspective

In contemporary society marriage is seen as the foundation of all social relations and it has remained an important goal for youngsters to achieve in the future. Spouse selection over the years especially, among adults had received extensive attention in the academic tertiary institutions in Ghana, yet little is known precisely about the internal determining factors influencing spouse selection for marriage especially among tertiary students. This current study seek to unearth the internal factors that informs individual choice for marriage among students in the public universities in Ghana. Stimulus-Value-Role (SVR) theory anchored the study and also a simultaneous mixed design was used for the study. The public Universities were sampled Ninety-three respondents were interviewed. Both primary and secondary data were sourced and descriptive statistics was used for the analyses. The findings showed that more than 93% of the students (both sexes) consider issues such as intelligence, emotional stability, dependable attitude, maturity and religion of their prospective spouses as important in the selection process. Agreeableness which is one of the extraversion dimensions and talks about how friendly and compassionate a person is was identified as the most effective element considered in the selection process. The study concluded that students varied in the exact factors they anticipated, desiring potential mates with compatibility factors truly want to find spouses who exemplified what they preferred. The study recommended that the counsellors of the tertiary institutions should endeavour to organize marriage seminars for students to educate them on the need to be cautious of the desired factors. The desired factors predict significantly on students’ choices of a spouse for marriage.