As the effectiveness of group counseling to relieve adolescents' stress and solve their psychological problems was verified, research on developing programs was aggressively conducted. Indeed, a lot of programs were applied to help adolescents who ha...
As the effectiveness of group counseling to relieve adolescents' stress and solve their psychological problems was verified, research on developing programs was aggressively conducted. Indeed, a lot of programs were applied to help adolescents who have psychological difficulties but various problems happening in programs were ceaselessly raised. Therefore, this study aims to suggest scientific evidence as for programs for young adults.
Studies on the effects of programs as to group counseling for adolescents developed in Korea were analyzed in this study. Studies covering programs having the procedure of development, in which PICOS was applied, were selected. Data were collected by using key words: 'the impact of the program of group counseling', 'adolescent, a middle school student, a high school student, middle and high school students, an alternative school', and 'the development of the program'. 1,417 studies found through database were examined and 78 qualified studies were finally selected for this study.
The effect size of an individual program and the whole effect size of the program were yielded by meta-analysis. Heterogeneity of size effect of an individual study was so big that an analysis of moderating effect was conducted depending on traits of group programs, participants, and group operation. Also, effect size by the procedure of developing an individual program was investigated. The procedure of developing an individual program was classified into 4 typologies and its mean value of size effect was yielded. Results from the analysis are summarized as follows.
First, the whole average of size effect of group counseling programs for adolescents was 1.367, which was big. Thus, it was identified that group counseling programs played an effective role in the growth, development, and healing of adolescents.
Second, results from the analysis of moderating effect showed that an integrated theory had high size effect in an analysis of using a counseling theory. It was found that image and psychodrama had the biggest size effect in the analysis using the medium.
Third, the result from analyzing mediating effect depending on characteristics of participants showed that high school students and students who are in a crisis had big size effect.
Fifth, the analysis of the procedure of developing group programs showed that when requirement analysis was conducted, there emerged high size effect in the evaluation of contents validity, the establishment of the strategy to execute programs, and programs which were preliminarily studied. In addition, as dependent variables increased, the size effect of the program was decreased. In ways to verify the effect of the program, research using both qualitative and quantitative ways indicated high size effect.
Sixth, the procedure of developing programs found in 78 studies was categorized into 4 typologies. As a result, the fourth typology contained the follow things: 'requirement analysis', 'setting up a goal', 'suggesting a theory', 'choosing factors for an activity', 'performing assessment of programs' contents validity', 'plans to evaluate and a tool to adopt', 'the establishment of the strategy to execute programs', 'making a guideline', 'conducting preliminary research', 'appraising preliminary research', 'modifying and supplementing a program', and 'a revised procedure of the program after assessing a program'. It was found that the fourth typology had the biggest size effect.
This study is meaningful as follows. First, studies on the effect of group counseling programs for adolescents having been conducted for recent 30 years were aggregated by criteria of selecting studies to analyze. As a result, empirical data were suggested through examining the effectiveness of group counseling to help adolescents not only to grow and development but also to prevent and solve problems which adolescents might face, and the difference of the effect depending on a wide variety of variables such as characteristics of programs, attitudes of participants, traits of group operation, and the procedure of the program. Second, the procedure of developing programs for adolescents were divided into 4 typologies based on data from accumulated data on the procedure of programs for teenagers. Third, it was revealed that there were different effects depending on 4 typologies of the procedure of developing programs for adolescents. On top of that, data with evidence, which can be effectively used in developing group counseling programs, and foundation to systematically develop programs for adolescents were provided.