The Effect of a Psycho-Training Program Designed to Increase Optimism on Secondary School Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficiency of a psycho-training program designed to increase optimism levels of the secondary school students. Pre-test post-test control group design was used in the study. “Life Orientation Scale”, which was developed by Scheier and Carver (1987) and adapted by Aydın and Tezer (1991), was applied to the 8th graders of Istanbul Avcılar Cihangir State School in 2015-2016 academic year. 24 voluntary students with low optimism levels were selected, then, 12 of them were randomly assigned as experimental group, and the other 12 were assigned as control group. Psycho-training program was applied to only experimental group for one and half hour for eight weeks. Control group was not exposed to any manipulation. The independent variable in this study was psycho-training program and the dependent variable was the optimism level of the students. For the analysis of the data Mann- Whitney U test was used for inter-group differences and Wilcoxon Signed Rang Test was used for intra-group differences. The results of the study indicate that psycho-training program designed to increase optimism levels has been effective in increasing optimism levels of the students in experimental group. Keywords: Optimism, Secondary school students, Psycho-training program China insurance industry, Foreign fund, Challenge DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-2-0