Compared to the fact that family violence issues have been focused on in our society as a serious problem recently, there has been not enough studies on children who have witnessed marital violence or been abused by their parents; being exposed to fam...
Compared to the fact that family violence issues have been focused on in our society as a serious problem recently, there has been not enough studies on children who have witnessed marital violence or been abused by their parents; being exposed to family violence directly and indirectly. But, it is clear that the children exposed to family violence have problems in their behavior, emotion, and cognition. Among these problems, aggressive behaviors tend to stay stable through an adolescent period and adulthood. Also, violent interaction within the family can influence child's aggressive behavior learning pattern and enforcement and further more it can cause intergenerational transformation of violence. Therefore aggressive behavior problem is a very important issue that should be dealt with thoroughly.
By bringing up the above problems, this study develops and executes aggressive behavior reducing program of the children exposed to family violence, and verify the program's effectiveness. To accomplish the studys objectives, in the procedure of developing the program, participatory research method has been applied based on document researches and social welfare field practitioner's participation. Also, experimental design method was applied to execute the program and verify its effectiveness.
To develop the program, characteristics of the children exposed to family violence and aggressive behavior and its intervention methods were reviewed through literature review. Based on cognitive-behavioral treatment model and stress coping model, the researcher has designed the program through ten draft sessions. Afterwards the researcher formed a focus group consisting community gongbubang teachers. Through seven sessions of focus group meeting, the researcher reviewed an adequacy and applicability of the targeted children, adjusting and revising the result. The contents of the discussion with the focus group were analyzed by content analysis and the characteristics of the targeted children, parents and gongbubang teachers found by the result of the discussion were again categorized into 40 sub categories. Based on the children's qualities; such as negative self perceptions, emotional / behavioral / thinking problems, aggressive characteristics in personal relations, positive attitude on violence and experience of family or marital violence; negative emotion, distorted recognition of violence, substitute of aggressive behavior and recognition change and coping of family violence were used as main contents of the program.
For evaluation of the effectiveness of the program, 18 children were selected and formed an experimental group and comparison group with homogeneous qualities. The 18 children had been exposed to family violence and had aggressive behavioral problems. Pretest consisting 12 categories were performed before the children were intervened in the program. The 12 categories were aggressive behavior, anger, cognitive appraisal in family violence, self esteem and so on. After the intervention in the program, pre-post comparison among the experimental group and comparison group was performed. As a result of the effectiveness evaluation of the program, there was a significant reduction effect on aggressive behavior by children, parents and teachers evaluation. This significant effect can be considered in the point of other factors that influence aggressive behavior, such as anger, cognitive appraisal and self esteem relationship.
In Anger category, hostile attitude towards others, intensity and duration of anger, verbal aggression and physical confrontation showed significant changes. Through this result, the program was effective in a way that children reduced their hostile attitude once they recognized their violent behavior and by reducing the intensity and duration of anger, aggressive behavior was reduced as a result. Particularly, by directly dealing with trauma that had been caused by being exposed to family violence and angry emotion, there is a possibility that through this program, children could recognize their angry emotion, attempting to elevate emotion-controlling capability at the same time.
Also, in cognitive appraisal on family violence, there was a significant change in coping efficacy. Children who were not aware of effective coping on marital conflicts tend to increase their aggressive behavior. But through this program, children could learn to separate marital conflict and violence from their self-protection problems. The practice that emphasizes the effective coping within children's capability when they were facing the problem situation and exercising in searching for the coping helped children to elevate coping efficacy and reduce aggressive behaviors. In directly experienced child abuse category, experimental group children showed positive changes in coping efficacy, self blame and perceived threat compared to the comparison group, but the changes were not significant enough to be stated statistically.
In self-esteem category, there was a significant change in self-adequacy. There is a possibility that by experiencing acceptance by peer and a leader through group activities have influenced change in self-behavioral conduct. Also the possibility of the fact that improvement of self-adequacy has influenced reducing aggressive behavior could be considered.
As a result, two significant factors could be drawn out by the family violence exposed children's aggressive behavior reducing program development and effectiveness verification. First is that the participation of the researcher in the process of program development with the targets helped participants all together to gain knowledge and take part in the production procedure. The researcher could observe children's qualities closer developing more suitable program and also educating and exploiting researcher's self awareness and providing motivation of the deed at the same time. In current situation of serious lack of awareness of family violence exposed children's problems, lack of intervention programs, methods and professional experts, participatory research method helped to draw field practitioner's attention and enhanced their empowerment. This program has significant meaning by being developed in such active process.
Second is that the program developed in this study is composed of anger management intervention of children's aggressive behavior and family violence related factors, effecting children's aggressive behavior changes through reducing negative emotion caused by family violence and cognitive appraisal on family violence that is formed on the other side of children's externalized behavioral problems. This is significant in the sense that by changing children's cognitive appraisal on family violence in environmental risk factors, protective factors could be developed.
Limitation of the study and a document of suggestions on the studies and practices of children exposed to family violence is attached.