Conflict Resolution, Marital Intimacy and Job Progression of Women in the CivilService of Cross River State, Nigeria.

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship that exists between conflict resolution, marital intimacy and job progression among women in the civil service of Cross River State, Nigeria. Seven purposes, seven research questions and seven hypotheses guided the study. The research design adopted for this study was the correlational research design. The population of this study consists of all married women in the civil service of Cross River State. The total married women are 23,346. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select total of seven hundred and fifty-eight (758) married women in the study area, selected from 10 local government area of Cross River State. Three experts validated the instruments that was used to collect data for the study. The instrument that was used for data collection in this study is a questionnaire titled “Marital Stability and Job Progression Questionnaire” (MS-JPQ) was administered to the respondents to elicit their responses. The instrument has 22 items with 4-option answer format. The instrument was in three sections, section A elicited information on the demographic data of the respondents with 3 items while section B elicited information from the respondents on Marital conflict resolution and marital intimacy and it is made up of 12 items, six items each for the two variables, while section C elicited questions about the respondents Job progression ten items each in section C on a 4- point Likert scale. Cronbach Alpha coefficient was used to determine the reliability estimate of the instrument ranging from .71-.85. The data that was collected and the hypothesis were answered using one sample t-test and simple regression, at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that conflict resolution and marital intimacy significantly predict job progression. It was recommended that Government should run counselling services even before anyone is employed in their office, to enable they be able to manage work and family and to make sure they understand the importance of communication among couples, intimacy, conflict management, for the maintenance of work-family balance.