The effect of social contact-based group guidance program on atti̇tudes towards refugee children

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a Group Guidance Program Based on the Intergroup Contact Theory on the attitudes of settled middle school students' toward refugee students. A quasi-experimental design, specifically the "pre-test-post-test experimental model with control groups," was used in this study. This study was conducted with 24 middle school students, including 12 middle school students (7 female, 5 mal) in the experimental group and 12 middle school students (6 female, 6 male) in the control group. The "Group Guidance Program Based on the Theory of Intergroup Contact" prepared by the researcher was implemented to the middle school students in the experimental group of the study. No intervention was made to the middle school students in the control group. The "Attitude Towards Refugee Students Scale (MÖYTÖ)" was used as the measurement tool in the study. Friedman test, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, and Mann Whitney U test were used to test the hypotheses of the study. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up scores of middle school students who participated in the group counseling program based on social contact theory, and that the post-test and follow-up scores were statistically significantly higher than the pre-test scores. while no statistically significant differences were found between the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up scores of middle school students in the control group. The mean scores of the post-test and follow-up scores of the middle school students in the experimental and control groups on the refugee students' attitude scale were found to be statistically significantly different, and the mean scores of the post-test and follow-up scores of the middle school students in the experimental group were found to be statistically significantly higher than the mean scores of the middle school students in the control group. Keywords: Intergroup contact, refugee, attitude, middle school students, group counseling program.