The effect of Adlerian group counseling on inferiority feeling and psychological symptoms levels of university students

This study has two main goals. The first one is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool to evaluate the inferiority feelings of university students. The second goal is to develop a group counseling program based on Adlerian Approach for university students to make them gain skills to cope with inferiority feelings, and test the effect of the program on inferiority feelings and psychological symptoms levels. The studies and results of the studies, which performed related to first and second goal, are given under two main sections as Study I and Study II.In the content of the Study I, a quintet likert-type scale, which called Inferiority Feeling Scale (IFS), is developed. The study is performed on 1016 students of Anadolu University who have been attending to faculties with formal education in 2010-2011 academic year. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a scale with three factors and 20 items has been manifested. The occurred factors have been named as ?Discouragement?, ?Negation of Self Value?, ?Useless Superiority Effort? in the light of item contents and theoretical framework. The results of the factor analysis shows that total of items explains 43.63% of the total variance and the factors explains 16.35%; 14.00% and 13.28% percents of variance in order. The scale is correlated with Brief Symptom Inventory with a correlation coefficient of .76; with Coopersmith Self Respect Inventory a correlation coefficient of -.74 and Social Comparison Scale -.66 level. The Cronbach alfa intervalidity coefficient of the scale is found to be .86, and the intervalidity coefficients of the factors are found to be .80, .71 and .73 in order. The Pearson Correlation Coefficient between two measurements of the scale, which performed in five weeks interval, is determined to be .88. The high score obtained from IFS, shows the severity of the inferiority feelings. The obtained evidences shows that IFS valid and reliable on measuring inferiority feelings of the university students.In the content of study II, a group counseling program (IFP) of eight sessions for university students to make them gain skills to cope with feelings of inferiority is developed and the effect of the program on inferiority feelings and psychological symptom levels is tested in the light of two main hypotheses. The first of the two hypotheses would lower the inferiority feeling level of the students and second is, it would lower psychological symptoms levels of the students.In Study II, a 3x3 experimental design with experiment, placebo, control group and pretest, posttest, follow up measurements is used. Thirty-six volunteer university students; 22 women and 14 men have attended study. While composing groups, as Inferiority Feeling Scale and Brief Sympton Inventory scores have been taken into account, first students are divided into male and female groups and then each of them have been assigned to experiment, placebo and control groups randomly. Inferiority Feeling Scale and Brief Symptom Inventory have been used for data collection. During the experiment, an eight sessions of group counseling in the IFP frame with experiment group and six session of interpersonal interaction themed counseling with placebo group have been performed. Control group have been on the hold for the experiment period and have not been taken into any study. Measurements of pretest, posttest and follow up are obtained from all of the three groups. In addition, a questionnaire has been given to experiment group attendants to exhibit the social validity of the program.When testing hypothesis, besides using descriptive statistics, to test the significancy of the difference of pretest, posttest and follow up measurements (within group) Friedman Test for Related Samples and while making twosome comparisons to determine the source of the difference Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test for Paired Samples is used. To test the significancy of the difference of the pretest, posttest and follow up scores of the three groups (between groups) The Kruskal-Wallis H Test for Independent Samples and to determine the source of the difference Mann Whitney U Test for Independent Samples is used. The responses given to the questionnaire, which is targeting to assess the social validity of the IFP is evaluated by using frequencies and percentages.The statistics done in the bundle of first hypothesis shows that IFP is efficient on lowering the inferiority feelings of university students significantly when compared to placebo and control groups and the effect is lasted for five weeks. The results of the testing second hypothesis which is about effect of IFP on psychological symptom levels of university students shows that program has lowered psychological symptom levels and the effect is lasted for five weeks. The responses experiment group attendants has given to the questionnaire, which is targeting to assess the social validity of the IFP expresses that the social validity of the program is pretty high.