The Effect of Solution-focused Brief Group Counseling upon the Perceived Social Competences of Teenagers

Abstract

In this study, the effect of solution-focused brief group counseling upon the perceived social competences of teenagers was investigated. The study group included 24 volunteer students who took lower scores rather than the ones obtained from perceived social competence scale pre-test measurements out of 227 students studying at a high school in Provincial center of Erzincan in 2015-2016 academic year. The research was an experimental study based upon experimental-control-placebo group pre-test, post-test and follow-up measurement design. Perceived Social Competence Scale and Personal Information Form were used as data collection tools. For the analysis of the obtained data, Kruskal Wallis H Test for Independent Samples, Mann Whitney U Test for Independent Samples and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test for Paired Samples as non-parametric analyses were used. As result of the study’s post-test measurements, it was determined that there was a significant increase at perceived social competence levels of the teenagers in experimental group rather than the control and placebo groups. The increase perceived social competences of the teenagers in the experimental group was noticed to be maintained in follow-up measurements carried out 3 months later the post-test measurements. In control and placebo groups, no significant difference was found between pre-test, post-test and follow-up test scores. As result of this study, solution-focused brief group counseling was determined to be efficient in increasing the perceived social competence levels of teenagers.