The effect of the group guidance program for 8th grade students on psychological well-being and hope levels: An online practice

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of online group guidance program for 8th grade students on students' psychological well-being and hope levels. In this research, quasi-experimental design, one of the types of experimental designs, was used. This research is in the form of an unbalanced control group pretest-posttest design. In the study, a 2x3 split-plot quasi-experimental model was used. The first part of this model consists of independent process groups (experiment and control), and the second part consists of measurements at different times (pretest, posttest, follow-up test). The study was carried out on a class of 8th grade students from two different secondary schools located in Battalgazi district of Malatya province, which are similar to each other in terms of academic success and socio-economic terms. There were 22 students in the experimental group and 25 students in the control group of the study. In the study, while the "Online Group Guidance Program for Increasing Psychological Well-being" consisting of nine sessions was applied to the experimental group, no action was taken for the control group. "Personal Information Form", "EPOCH Well-Being Scale" and "Children's Hope Scale" were used as data collection tools. SPSS 22 program was used in the processing and analysis of the data. "Wilks' Lambda Test" and "Two-Way Analysis of Variance for Mixed Measures" were used as analysis methods. As a result of the analysis, a significant increase was observed in the psychological well-being and hope posttest scores of the students in the experimental group. It was determined that this increase continued in the follow-up test conducted two months later. The results of the study were discussed in line with the literature, and some suggestions were made to psychological counselors and researchers. Keywords: Adolescents, psychological well-being, hope, group guidance, online practice