This study aimed to investigate the effect of the group play therapy on social competence and emotional intelligence of the children with anxiety. This study has been conducted for 14 cases of the children with anxiety who go to kindergarten of K and ...
This study aimed to investigate the effect of the group play therapy on social competence and emotional intelligence of the children with anxiety. This study has been conducted for 14 cases of the children with anxiety who go to kindergarten of K and M elementary school, located group N, in Busan.
Experimental design was conducted with Nonequivalent control group pre and post-test design and by 7 persons of the experimental group and 7 persons of the control group. The group play therapy was conducted in total 14 sessions in the experimental group from August 30 to september 30 in 2010, and 2~3 times per week but there were no any actions in the control group during the same period.
To verify the effectiveness of the program, anxiety, social competence and emotional intelligence were used as measurement tools. The Wilcoxon verification and the effect of the program were conducted whether the average scores of the test on the group is different or not, and used SPSS.12.0 to test the average pre and post-test and standard deviation of them. It is analyzed qualitatively the behavior change of children as it is recorded 60 minutes of each sessions of the treatment courses.
The following are the results through these procedures.
First, the children with anxiety of the experimental group who took part in the group play therapy program have been more improved in social competence than the children of the control group who did not participated in the program.
Second, the children with anxiety of the experimental group who took part in the group play therapy program have been significantly increased in emotional intelligence scores than the children of the control group who did not participated in the program.
Based on the results of this study, It is shown that the group play therapy program is helpful for the children with anxiety to improve their social competence and emotional intelligence. Therefore, the group play therapy program improves positively the social competence and emotional intelligence for the children with anxiety and shows us that the program is effective activities for them to have a good relationship with others. We can expect that this program will help the children with anxiety to improve effectively their social competences and emotional intelligence so that they may have a good interpersonal relationship with others and prevent them from being in social and emotional anxiety.