The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of self-growth program on the self-esteem and interpersonal relations of middle school girl students in a bid to lay the groundwork for universalizing group counseling in school.
The subjects were 2...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of self-growth program on the self-esteem and interpersonal relations of middle school girl students in a bid to lay the groundwork for universalizing group counseling in school.
The subjects were 24 students randomly selected from among the first graders in S girls' middle school, who were divided into an experimental group and a control group with 12 each. Before the experiment, self- esteem test and human-relations test were conducted. The self-growth program was applied to the experimental group 10 times, 60 to 80 minutes each, and no action was taken in the control group. The day after every counseling finished, both groups took posttest in the same way as pretest.
For data analysis, SPSS/PC Win 10.0 program was employed, and independent-samples t-test and paired-samples t-test were utilized to find out intergroup gap and disparity between pretest and posttest.
The findings of this study were as below:
First, there was a significant gap between the experimental and control groups at the 5% level of significance in general self-esteem. But no difference existed in the other self-esteem subareas.
Concerning individual self-esteem changes, the experimental group made a higher progress in social self-esteem and school self-esteem than the control group did. In addition, the evaluation of the program done by the students and this researcher's observation results showed that the students were able to open themselves and found themselves valuable as the counseling proceeded, although they lacked confidence, were inactive and had a inferiority complex in the past.
Second, the experimental group was significantly different from the control group at the 5% level of significance in interpersonal relations.
Third, those who participated in the self-growth program came to understand one another, build mutual trust and improve human relations in the first-half period of the counseling. As the program went on, they were able to open themselves more actively and be concerned about how others looked at themselves, their own strength, weakness and values. This fact illustrated that their self-esteem improved.
The above-mentioned findings suggested that the self-growth program served to nurture the self-esteem of the students, bring a gradual positive change to their interpersonal skills and consequently help them grow to be more worthwhile. Therefore, adolescents will be able to lead a healthier and happier life if group counseling is widespread in school education.