The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of the laughing activity program on general middle school students' laughter quotient and self-esteem.
For this purpose, I set up the following two research questions.
Research Question 1 : How d...
The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of the laughing activity program on general middle school students' laughter quotient and self-esteem.
For this purpose, I set up the following two research questions.
Research Question 1 : How does the laughing activity program affect the laughter quotient of students in general middle school?
Research Question 2 : How does the laughing activity program affect the self-esteem of students in general middle school?
The subjects of this study were forty students from M-middle school located in K city, Gyenggi-do, Korea. They were divided into two groups, experimental and control, and each group consisted of 20 students. First, students completed their laughter quotient and self-esteem scale and no difference was found between the groups proving two groups were homogeneous. Then laughing activity program carried out for the experimental group, two times per week for next 5 weeks, total of 10 hours and their laughter quotient and self-esteem were measured at the end. The check list used for the laughter quotient was based on the 15 items from the 'check list for the attitude toward self' and the 15 items from the 'check list for the attitude toward others" from Korea Laughing Institute, total of 30 items. And the self-esteem scale developed by Rosenberg(1965) and translated into Korean by Jeon, Byung-Jae was used, which had 10 items on a four-point Likert scale. The data collected from laughter quotient and self-esteem scale were statistically analyzed by T-test and ANCOVA.
The findings from this study are summarized as follows.
First, it was obvious that laughter quotient of the students in the experimental group for whom the laughing activity program was performed remarkably improved than that of the students from the control group. This result can be interpreted that laughter quotient was improved because the laughing activity program relieved stress. Therefore, laughing activity program has a positive impact on emotional cultivation of students in general middle school.
Secondly, it was obvious that self-esteem of the students from the experimental group for whom the laughing activity program was performed remarkably improved than that of the students from the control group. This result can be understood as the laughing activity program affects students' positive emotion which in turn affects self-esteem to increase. This result is consistent with the results from previous studies by Kim, Myeong-Son(2008) and Chae, Jeong-A(2007). It shows that laughing activity program has a positive impact on improving middle school students' self-esteem.
Finally, the followings are the applications of the results from this study and suggestions for future research.
First, the laughing activity program performed in this study can be widely used during discretional activity class, development class and related to curriculum, so some possible effects of other variables besides self-esteem can be founded in future research.
Secondly, since there are little studies adopted the laughing activity program, future studies can be conducted varying administrating times and periods, sizes of groups and contents of the laughing activity programs.
Thirdly, as studies adopted the laughing activity program for middle school students as targets are rare, it was impossible to compare and discuss this study's results with other studies targeted the same age group. So future research is needed to be conducted to find how long these effects found in this study will be effective and whether these effects are different from real facts.
Finally, home instruction is needed to be connected with school instruction for the effective laughing activity program at school. Also, the development of laughing activity program for parents and offering training and life-long education classes would be recommended.