The effect of structured art therapy program on social skills and problem behaviors of 5-6 year old children

The aim of this study was to investigate whether a structured art therapy program is effective in developing social skills and reducing problem behaviors in 5-6 year old children. The research was conducted using the "Pretest-Posttest Control and Experimental Group" experimental research design. In the experimental design, measurements were made before and after the Social Skills Program Based on Structured Art Therapy prepared by the researcher in both groups, and a follow-up test was administered to both groups after 3 weeks. The study group consisted of a total of 18 participants, 9 in the experimental group and 9 in the control group, selected from 5-6 year old pre-school children residing in Balıkesir Gönen district. Random sampling method was used for participant selection. The data collection tools used in the research consist of two parts. In the first part, a personal information form was used, and in the second part, the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scale was used as a pre-test, post-test and follow-up test. In the study, whether the variables conformed to normal distribution was examined using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Shapiro-Wilk and skewness-kurtosis coefficients. Variables that comply with normal distribution are given with mean and standard deviation values. "Independent Sample t-Test" was used to analyze the differences between two independent groups, and "Paired Sample t-Test" was used to analyze the differences between two dependent groups. Statistical analyzes were performed in the IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0 program. The significance level was taken as 0.05. The research shows that a structured art therapy program can have positive effects, especially on social interaction, externalizing problems and problem behaviors. These findings indicate that art therapy may be an effective intervention method for children with such problems. However, it did not create a significant difference in terms of internalization, social cooperation, social independence and social skills.