Self-reported Psychosexual Lifestyles of University Students in South-Western Nigeria: Implication for Professional Counselling

AbstractHuman sexuality is generally described as the sum total of manner through which people experience and articulate their sexual sensation. It encompasses physiological make-up as well as socio-cultural, psychological and spiritual aspects of life. Considerable researches have been conducted on human sexuality among university students but this paper measures twelve psychosexual constructs among six hundred and eight university students (376 males and 232 females) randomly selected from three universities in South-western, Nigeria. Snell (1997) Multidimensional Sexuality Questionnaire (MSQ), consisting of 12 different psychological constructs related to sexual relationships was used to gather data. One research question and one research hypothesis guided the study. Descriptive statistics of frequency count, mean and t-test statistic were employed to analyze the data. The findings indicated that the participants reported higher mean score of 18.37 for psychosexual constructs of sexual esteem and the lowest mean rating of 10.76 for sexual depression,. Further analysis showed that there were no significant differences on sexual esteem and depression of the participants on gender basis. It is recommended that counsellors should broaden sexual recovery psychotherapeutic intervention programmes that will further enhance psychosexual lifestyles of university students