Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of premarital
counselling on adjustment among Christian couples in the Cape Coast
Metropolis. A case study was used as the design for the study. Convenience
sampling procedure was used to select the three churches from the metropolis.
A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data for the study. Using
Tabacknik & Fidell (1996) procedure for sample size determination, a sample
size of 300 Christian couples were selected for the study. The study revealed
that many Christian husbands and wives had positive attitude towards the
views on premarital counselling as only few of them had negative attitude
towards views on premarital counselling. It also revealed that many Christian
husbands and wives found experience and knowledge gained from premarital
counselling to be very relevant to their marriage life. There was no significant
difference in Christian husbands and wives who had undergone premarital
counselling, and those who had not. Also, there was no significant difference
in the marital adjustment level of Christian husbands and wives who had
undergone premarital counselling and those who had not.
As a result of the findings, it was recommended that Counsellors
should make pre-counselling assessment to ascertain areas where the
©University of Cape Coast
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prospective couple may have challenges and counsel them on those areas. The
study also recommended that the counselling relationship should be
terminated based on the goals set, but in most cases it is terminated without
reaching any set goals. Therefore counsellors and prospective couples should
make sure that goals are set for the counselling process and these must be
achieved before they terminate the counselling process
