The Effectiveness of Self-Encouragement Training in Psychological Hardiness and Social Health among Students

Social health refers to an individual’s assessment and recognition of his/her performance in the community and the quality of his/her relationships with close relatives, social groups, and other people. Among different strata of the society, paying attention to students’ social health, as people who have to build the future of the country, is of significant importance. Moreover, a factor which may be associated with social health is psychological hardiness. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of self-encouragement training in psychological hardiness and social health among students.

This quasi-experimental study followed by a two-group pretest-posttest design. The current study had a statistical population constituting of all male six-grade elementary school students in Zahedan in the academic year 2016-2017. To collect data, a corpus of 30 students was selected using a multistage random sampling method. Data collection tools applied to achieve the objectives of carrying out this study were Kiyameri et al. Psychological Hardiness Scale (1998) and Keyes and Shapiro Social Health Inventory (2004). Data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics, like calculating means and standard deviations, and inferential statistics, including a multivariate analysis of covariance.

Results of the analysis of covariance indicated that self-encouragement training was effective in increasing mean scores of the experimental group on social health (P≤0.001) and psychological hardiness (P≤0.005) compared to the control group.

Self-encouragement techniques can be taught to students. These techniques are effective in maintaining their social health and psychological hardiness.