The effect of the psycho-educational program on high school students to develop the tendency of forgiveness

The aim of this research is to test the effectiveness of the psycho-education program, which was created in the consideration of the REACH forgiveness process model developed by Worthington, in improving the forgiveness of 10th and 11th grade students in adolescence. It has been observed that in the context of adolescence development characteristics of students aged 12-21, peer relationships gain importance and the in this period when conflicts among peers are intense, tendency to forgive is less. For this purpose, a quasi-experimental model with experimental-control and placebo groups, pre&post-test and follow-up test was used. The students in the experimental, control and placebo groups of the study consist of 39 students at Fatih Social Sciences High School in Şırnak in the 2021-2022 academic year. Of these students, 13 (10 girls, 3 boys) were in the experimental group, 13 (10 girls, 3 boys) were in the control group, and 13 (10 girls, 3 boys) were in the placebo group. In the study, the Forgiveness Scale for Adolescents (FSFA) and Personal Information Form developed by Asıcı and Karaca (2018) were used to measure forgiveness levels. Measurement tools were applied by the researcher and data were collected. A psycho-education program aimed at improving forgiveness, which was created in the consideration of the REACH forgiveness process model developed by Worthington, was applied to the experimental group by the researcher. No action was taken in the control group. However, in the placebo group, activities that are thought to be unrelated to forgiveness will take place every week. Before proceeding to the data analysis, the parametric assumptions of the Forgiveness Scale for Adolescents data applied to the experimental, control and placebo groups were examined. For the normality assumption, skewness and kurtosis values were examined first, and then the Shapiro-Wilk test was used on the grounds that the research group was less than 50. As a result of the skewness – kurtosis values and the findings obtained as a result of the normality test analysis, it was accepted that the scores obtained from the scales showed a normal distribution for all groups. So, one-way Analysis of Variance, t test for dependent groups and t test for independent groups were used. As a result of the research, it has been shown that psycho-education applied to improve forgiveness has a significant effect on the increase in students' forgiveness levels. It was found that there was a significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental and control groups. The results were discussed in accordance with the literature and suggestions were made for future studies.