Psychological Adjustment as Correlate of Internet Fraud and Drug Abuse Among Youths in Anambra State, Nigeria

Psychological adjustment entails the process of maintaining a harmonious relationship between man and his environment. The psychological adjustment among youths can be affected by certain psychological factors such as tension, fear and parental stress, among others. An individual can psychologically adjust positively or negatively. If the youths psychologically adjust positively, possibly the society will have peace and security will be strictly assured, but if they happen to adjust negatively, the society will be porous and filthy, and certain abnormal behaviours such as drug abuse and internet fraud will eventually emerge, leading to a lack of peace and insecurity in the society. It is based on this that this study investigated the correlation between psychological adjustments, drug abuse and internet fraud among youths, specifically in Anambra State, Nigeria. The study adopted a correlational research design. Three research questions and three null hypotheses were used for the study. A sample of 480 youths was drawn out of 2,225,408 youths in Anambra State using accidental sampling techniques. Three instruments titled “Psychological Adjustment Questionnaire (PAQ), Drug Abuse Questionnaire (DAQ) and Internet Fraud Questionnaire (IFQ) were used for data collection. The instruments were validated by three experts at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Cronbach’s alpha method was used to obtain the reliability value of the instrument, which yielded 0.78 for psychological adjustment questionnaire, 0.84 for Drug abuse and 0.88 for Internet fraud, respectively. The researchers adopted direct delivery techniques (DDT) for data collection. Data collected were analysed using Pearson (r) moment product correlation for the research questions and hypothesis three, while simple regression analysis was used for hypotheses one and two. Results showed, among others, that drug abuse strongly relates to the psychological adjustment of youths in Anambra State. It also revealed that drug abuse and internet fraud do not jointly correlates youths’ psychological adjustment. Based on the findings, it was concluded that psychological adjustment does not jointly correlates drug abuse and internet fraud among youths. Therefore, it was recommended among others that parents should be careful with the type of language they use on their children to avoid criticism that can lead these youths into frustration, which undoubtedly might lead them to drug abuse and internet fraud.