dc.description.abstract |
The purpose of the study was to establish the influence of the Church in the
mitigation of extramarital affairs in Bondeni Sub-location, Nakuru County- Kenya.
Nakuru County is ranked among the top ten counties where extramarital affairs is
potentially rife, as implied by the relatively high HIV prevalence. The study was
anchored on Cognitive Behaviour Theory and the Sound Relationship House Theory.
Descriptive survey design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to
select 310 married members from six Churches that run pre-marital counseling and
couple seminars/programmes. Data was collected through questionnaires and
interview guide. The data was analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative
techniques, and more specifically, the Chi Square and Spearman’s Rank Correlation
tests at 0.05 significance levels. The results revealed that incidences of extramarital
affairs were significantly higher among respondents who did not attend pre-marital
counseling before getting married than among respondents who attended pre-marital
counseling. There was also a significant inverse relationship between incidences of
extramarital affairs and skills gained from marriage seminars, with most of the
respondents of the view that marriage seminars were effective. The results further
showed that there was a significant negative correlation between incidences of
extramarital affairs and Christian role-modeling. In general, the results affirmed the
Church as an effective custodian of moral fiber in society with significant effects on
regulating the behaviour of the society towards upholding the sanctity of marriage as
God instituted it. Through pre-marital counselling programmes, marriage seminars
and good role-modelling, the Church was able to mitigate extramarital affairs in the
society. Therefore, the Church needed to give greater prominence to comprehensive
pre-marital counselling for couples intending to get married, marriage
seminars/programmes and role modelling by married couples. Since the research was
undertaken at sub-location level, future researchers needed to expand the geographical
scope of the study to consider other locations within and outside Kenya so as to seek
to enhance the validity of the findings of the study. |
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