Gender Specific Skills Promote Female Adolescent Well-Being

The literature on the middle school years for girls has indicated that it is both a critical and arduous developmental period. This is important to social work practitioners because middle school‐aged girls are an at‐risk population that needs to be helped in a unique way. One preventative method that is often extremely beneficial to this population are small, gender‐specific, skills groups which openly discuss issues in a safe, informative, and therapeutic way. More specifically, an agency in Rhode Island that serves at‐risk girls conducts a community‐based mentor program. The program meets with the same small cohort of girls over approximately thirteen weeks to discuss various issues. This study sought to explore whether two current groups successfully improved the girl’s overall well‐being. The main factors used to operationalize the girl’s overall well‐being include helping them deal with peer pressure, learn about healthy relationships, and heighten their self‐confidence. Results indicated that increases in the mean difference for all three scales between the pre and post‐tests suggest that the Life Choices groups helped the participants more fully grasp the concept of healthy relationships, in dealing with peer pressure, and in improving self esteem. Thus, the data appears to support the proposed hypothesis and corresponding literature findings that the skills group improved the adolescent girls’ overall well‐being