Comparing the effectiveness of social skills and cognitive-affective skills trainings on violent behaviors tendency among high school students

Abstract

Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of social and cognitive-affective skills on violent behaviors tendency among high school students. Materials and Methods: The population of this clinical trial included male high school students of Hamadan and Tehran studying in academic year of 2012-2013. The sampling in the first step was done through multi-level cluster sampling and in the second step, random substitution was used. First, the Interpersonal Aggressive questionnaire was administered to the students. Then, 120 students (60 students in each province) were chosen from among those who received the higher scores than the cut point and they were randomly distributed to the control and experimental groups (i.e., 6 groups with 20 students in each group). The social and cognitive-affective skills programs were performed in 10 sessions. In addition to the CTS questionnaire including social specifications, demographic questionnaire, Bar-On Emotional Intelligence questionnaire, Emotional Control scale, and the second version of Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory- II (ROCI-II) were administered. To analyze the data, Covariance analysis (ANCOVA) and LSD test were used. Results:The results indicated that there is a difference between the effectiveness of social skills and cognitive-affective skills on the tendency toward aggressive behaviors (P= 0.021, M= 2.824). Conclusion: It seems that training cognitive-affective skills is more effective than social skills in reducing violent behaviors tendency in high school students.

Keywords

• adolescents
• affect
• cognition
• social skills
• violence