The effect of bibliotherapy in reducing the fears of kindergarten children

The purpose of the study was to determine the effectiveness of bibliotherapy in reducing the fears of kindergarten children.The experimental design of the study compared three groups using pretest/posttest measures: 1) The Experimental group was an intact class of kindergarten students. The treatment for the group involved reading books on fear related subjects to the students and then having follow-up discussions concerning the book and the children's feelings. The treatment was conducted on a biweekly basis for eight weeks. 2) Control group I was an intact class of kindergarten students. The treatment for the group involved reading books of non-fear related subjects to the students and then having follow-up discussions concerning the book and the children's feelings. The treatment was conducted on a biweekly basis for eight weeks. 3) Control group II represented students from two intact classes of kindergarten students who had the same teacher and had received parental permission to participate in the study. There was no treatment for Control group II. The Experimental group and Control group I were randomly assigned treatment.The Link Children's Fear Scale was administered as a pretest and posttest. The instrument was developed from fifty items which purport to measure children's fears. Factor analysis was employed utilizing principal axes components to estimate the number of factors needed to best explain the total variation in the items. Using squared multiple correlations as initial communality estimates, the principal axes. analysis suggested a two factor solution. An Oblimin rotation was used. Those items which loaded above .30 were selected and retained in the revised instrument. The instrument in its final form consisted of twenty-four items. An example of an item: "Do you like to sleep with a light on?" The response mode was the child's indication yes or no.The factor analysis described above attests to the construct validity of the instrument. Face validity and sampling validity had previously been determined. The test-retest reliability of the instrument was calculated from kindergarten students who did not receive treatment. A reliability coefficient of .70 was obtained.The design for the study attempted to control for all variables other than treatment received. The Experimental group and Control group I were supervised by the same kindergarten teacher. A Reader/Discussion Leader, certificated as an elementary teacher, read the selected books and led the follow-up discussions for the Experimental group and Control group I. The Experimental group and Control group I followed the same procedure of hearing a book read by the Reader/Discussion Leader and then participated in a follow-up discussion of the book, as a part of each treatment session.The hypothesis was stated in the study as follows: There is no difference between the mean adjusted posttest scores of kindergarten students who received bibliotherapy to reduce childhood fears and the mean adjusted posttest scores of kindergarten students who did not receive bibliotherapy, where the means have been adjusted on the basis of the pretest scores.To test the hypothesis an analysis of covariance was used. The pretest served as the covariate and the posttest was the criterion.The analysis showed that the pretests for all groups differed significantly (.001) from the posttests. However, the group effects were not significant at the .05 level, thus indicating no difference between the experimental and control groups. The hypothesis was not rejected.Thesis (D. Ed.