Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
22.ULUSLARARASI PSİKOLOJİK DANIŞMA VE REHBERLİK KONGRESİ, Muş, Türkiye, 7 - 10 Ekim 2021, ss.253-254
In the 21st century, preventive and interfering psychological counseling is among the important responsibilities of school counselors. When COVID-19 pandemic is included in adolescence period and the preparation process for YKS, the fact that school counselors conduct intervention programs in this process for the students with high stress levels will prevent psychological disorders that may arise. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to examine the effect of stress coping program based on solution-focused brief therapy based group counseling on the stress levels of students who are preparing for University Entrance Exam (YKS) during COVID-19 pandemic. This study is an experimental study based on the one-group pretest-posttest design. In this direction, 12th grade students who will take YKS in 2021-2021 academic year were assigned to the experimental group. The experimental group consists of 6 people, 5 female and 1 male students. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy based group counseling process was conducted with the students in the experimental group, which lasted for 8 weeks. Kolmogorov-Smirnov Analysis was performed to test whether the data set meets normality assumption. As a result of the analysis, it can be seen that KolmogorovSmirnov values of pretest (D6=.183, p> .05) and posttest (D6=.252, p>.05) data are statistically non-significant. It can also be seen that Shapiro-Wilk values are statistically nonsignificant. Accordingly, obtained data were analyzed with Paired Sample T-Test in SPSS. As a result of the analysis, posttest stress mean score of the experimental group is significantly different from the pretest stress mean score (t5=3.46, p<.05). It is seen that the posttest stress mean score (M=3.03) of the experimental group is lower than the pretest stress mean score (M=3.63). When the effect size was calculated, the r value was found as .83, indicating high effect size. In this regard, it can be said that solution-focused brief therapy based group counseling is efficient in reducing stress levels of the students preparing for YKS. During the conduct of this study, some limitations have arisen. The first limitation of the study is that one-group pretest-posttest experimental design was used. As we could not reach sufficient number of students to form a control group, we chose to use this design. However, since there is no control group in this design, it is not possible to say for certain whether the change in the experimental group resulted from the interfering program. In other words, it becomes difficult to control the threats to internal validity. Accordingly, using control and placebo groups as well as experimental group in future studies will minimize internal validity threats that may involve in the study. Another limitation of the study is loss of subjects within the process. Although group counseling started with 11 students, 5 participants left the therapy for a variety of reasons and the process continued with 6 students. Loss of subjects is also a threat to internal validity. In this direction, stress mean scores of the students in the experimental group and the ones who left were compared. As a result of the analysis, it was seen that there was no significant difference between the stress mean score (M=2.86) of the experimental group and the stress mean score (M=2.76) of the students who left the process (t9=.985, p>.05). In conclusion, COVID-19 pandemic was also added to important stressors experienced by high school students, alongside being in developmental period and the preparation process for university entrance exam. The fact that school counselors determine stress levels of students in such crisis situations and conduct intervention programs for reducing their stress levels will prevent many mental disorders from developing. Indeed, group counseling program prepared within the scope of this study to reduce stress levels of 12th grade students will be a source that school counselors can use for this purpose.
Keywords: Stress, Anxiety, Exam, Higher Education, Secondary Educatio