The effect of cognitive behavioral play therapy based psycho-education program on the level of violent content digital game addiction and aggressiveness

The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of cognitive behavioral play therapy based psycho-education program that was developed by the researcher on the level of violent content digital game addiction and aggressiveness in children. The research was conducted with 4th grade students in primary school in Gebze district of Kocaeli province in 2019-2020 educational years. After the implementation of the pretest with 219 students, a psycho-education program was carried out 20 students who got the highest scores from scales (10 students from the experimental group, 10 students from the control group). The research, which is an experimental design, has an independent variable as the cognitive behavioral play therapy based psycho-education program and dependent variables as both digital game addiction and aggressiveness scores. Research data on digital game addiction and aggressiveness were collected through "Computer Game Addiction Scale for Children" and "Aggressiveness Scales" respectively. Among the experimental research designs, split plot design of 2x3 (pretest-posttest-follow-up test) was used in the research. 10 of 20 students who scored the highest in the ''Computer Game Addiction Scale for Children'' and ''Aggressiveness Scales'' were chosen as the experimental group and the remaining 10 students were determined as the control group. Following the pre-test process, a 10-week cognitive behavioral play therapy based psycho-education program was conducted on the experimental group as an intervention program, while no intervention was performed for the control group. 2 weeks after the intervention program, a post-test was applied to both the experimental and the control groups. 3 months after the post-test, a follow-up test was applied to both the experimental and the control groups. In the analysis of data, two-factor analysis for repeated measures in a single factor was used in order to determine whether there was a significant difference between the measurement scores and the group scores. Analysis of Pearson's Correlation test was performed for finding if there was any correlation between the dependent variances. Data were analyzed by using the SPSS 22.00 packet program and the value of .05 was accepted as the level of significance. According to research findings; cognitive behavioral play therapy based psycho-education program was found to have a significant effect on the level of digital game addiction and aggressiveness in the experimental group. This positive impact sustained its effectiveness in the follow-up process in favor of digital game addiction. Yet, this effectiveness had not been persistent for the variable of aggressiveness. However, a positive and high-level correlation was found between digital game addiction and aggressiveness thorough the correlation analysis. Finally, the findings of the research were discussed in the light of the relevant literature, and recommendations were made for further researches.