Effectiveness of Group Reality Therapy Training in the Locus of Control and Coping Strategies

Coping strategies are cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific demands that are appraised as taxing orexceeding the resources of the person. Locus of control refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them as either internal or external. These two above-mentioned concepts occupy dominant role in the individuals’ mental health. The research purpose was to assess the effectiveness of group reality therapyin the locus of control and coping strategies amongst the female students. Therefore، utilizing a quasi-experimental and pretest-posttest groups design، a sample of 20 female students visiting the clinics at Ferdowsi University was selected using convenience sampling and was randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent eight sessions of group reality therapy training. It’s worth mentioning that both groups were tested in terms of coping strategies and locus of control prior to the training. Results of multivariate covariance analysis provide supports for the change in the scores of the locus of controland decrease in the emotion-focused coping strategies.