Effect of social emotional skills training program on 6th, 7th and 8th grade students' emotional intelligence levels

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Social Emotional Skills Training Program on emotional intelligence levels of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. In the first phase of the study, 218 students completed the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory: Child and Adolescent Form developed by Bar-On and parker (2000). Based on the scores, the students who got low emotional intelligence scores randomly assigned to treatment group, placebo group, and control group. Although the study started with 30 students (10 for treatment group; 10 for placebo group; and 10 for control group), in post test measurements 4 students from treatment group and 1 student from placebo group were excluded from the study because they did not attend the all sessions. During the study, for 10 weeks while students in treatment group attended Social Emotional Skills Training Program and students in placebo group attended guidance activities, students in the control group had no interventions. 10 week Social Emotional Skills Training Program to which treatment group attended was a psycho-education program. This program was developed based on the dimensions of interpersonal, intrapersonal, stress management, adaptability and general mood in Bar-On's emotional intelligence model. The training sessions was carried out once a week. First session included getting acquainted with each other, introducing the program and knowing the emotions; second session included differentiation of emotions and thoughts; third session included differentiation of thoughts and behaviors; fourth session included expressing oneself nonverbally and body language; fifth session included I-language; sixth session included empathy and effective listening; seventh session included social skills (assertiveness, apologizing, to be able to say no, asking questions etc.); eighth session included motivation and emotional regulation; ninth session included stress management; and the final session included closure of the program. In the data analysis, to test the mean differences between prettest and posttest scores of Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory: Child and Adolescent Form, Wilxoxon Signed Rank Test; and to test mean differences among the posttest scores Kruskal Wallis H test were used. According to results, there were significant mean differences between pretest and posttest scores of interpersonal, intrapersonal and total EQ in treatment group. There were significant mean differences between pretest and posttest scores of interpersonal, general mood and total EQ in placebo group. Finally, there were significant mean differences in stress management among treatment, placebo, and control groups in treatment group's favour.