The effects of skills enhancement group program which is based on problem solving therapy on college students? social problem solving skills, anger related behaviours and cognitions, trait-anxiety levels

In this study, the effects of social problem solving skills training on university students? social problem solving, behaviors and thoughts related with anger and trait anxiety levels is examined.The research was carried out on the students that are registered at 2008-2009 academic year of Çukurova University from the Department of Education, Primary Education Training, Pre-school Teaching Training and Psychological Counseling and Guidance. Students were chosen from the volunteers of 2nd and 3rd level students that want to take part in the study.The research is a kind of quasi-experimental study. 34 students took part in the study that 17 of them were in the experiment group and 17 of them were in the control group. During the selection time of students to the groups, volunteered students that want to take part in the study and students having low level of social problem solving skills were considered as test subjects. During the designation time of students to the groups, equalization process was done.In this research, a psycho-educational program composed of eight sessions which is formed considering the Problem Solving Therapy (D? Zurilla ve Nezu, 2007; Nezu, Nezu and D? Zurilla, 2007) was performed to the experiment group and during this time control group did not take any of them. Each session was composed of 2-2,5 hour program carried out once a week. Problem solving skills training is a psycho-educational group intervention which was carried out on experiment group aimed to improve skills, it has educational content and includes a lot of exercises, also, sessions were composed of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?s different techniques, including experimental and interactional interaction at the same time.The data was gathered by using both qualitative and quantitative methods. As a tool for data collection, Social Problem Solving Inventory-Short Form which is adapted from English to Turkish language by the researchers, The Subscales of Multidimensional Anger Inventory ; Anger Related Behaviors and Anger Related Cognitions (Balkaya, 2001) and Trait Anxiety Scale (Öner ve LeCompte, 1985) were applied to experimental group and control groups in order to collect quantitive data. The given scales were applied to both of the experimental group and control group as pretest and post test, but in monitoring process, they were only given to experimental group because the researcher did not reach the control group. In the analysis of the quantitive data, covariance analysis, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Mann Whitney U test and t test for related samplings were used. The qualitative data were also obtained through a semi-configured question form designed by the researcher and just applied to experimental group. Those documents were given twice in order to see the personel assessments of the participants as to the gains they had after the intervention programs: firstly after the experiment process and during the monitoring process. The document analysis technique was used to analyse the qualitative data.Findings was indicated that the intervention program was effective on improving the students? social problem solving skills and anger related cognitions and this effect went on long lasting. Another findings in this research, the invervention program was not any significiant effects on the students? anger related behaviors such as agressive behaviors, calm behaviours, anxious behaviors and anger related cognitions such as his/her anger, the other people, himself/herself.According to the points of the trait anxiety levels there was a significant differences both the experimental and control groups? posttest results and this results was positive. At the follow-up studies the follow-up results was lower than posttest. Totally this findings indicated that the differences occured any other reasons except the intervention program.Finally it is possible to say that intervention program was effective on enhancing students? social problem solving skills.