Effectiveness of Preventive Training on Girls and Boys Harmful Relationships on Attitudes of Male and Female High School Student

IntroductionPathologic relations between girls and boys is a problem that have led to some worries for families and educational staff in Iran. Such relations can lead to some worries for adolescent as well as feeling of abuse, depression, irrtiability, confusion, poor educational function. isolation, negative attitude toward marriage and so on. It is necessary to design some programs of prevention. These programs should make the adolescents aware about negative relations and positive relations. Also they must be aware how they can manage these relations. One of these programs, is preventive training that can be executed for adolescents to educate them about the harms of these relations. Thus, the aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of prevention of harmful relationships training on attitudes of male and female high school students of Shahinshahr City toward boys and girls relationships.Research HypothesisIt is assumed that preventive training can change the attitude of students about psychological, educational, familial, social and marital harms due to these relations. The second assumption was that there is a significant difference between boys and girls in attitude toward harmful relations. And, the interactive hypothesis was that the effect of preventive training is different in boy and girl students. MethodTo do this, a semi-experimental research method of pretest/postest control group and one month follow-up was conducted. Statistical population consisted of all of high school students in the first and second grade. Research sample was selected by clustering sampling method (295 totals) on the basis of grade and assigned to experimental (144 students) and control groups (151 students) randomly. Experimental group received prevention of harmful relationships training for six 1.5-hours in per sessions for 6 weeks. The measurement of this research was attitude toward relationships of boys and girls questionnaire developed by the researcher. This questionnaire consisted of 41 items. Questionnaire reliability with cronbach’s alpha was 0.92. ResultsThe results of the analysis of variance controling pretest scores showed that overall prevention of harmful relationship training has caused attitude change in students in post-test and follow-up points. In addition, the comparison of mean scores showed that attitudes of male and female students toward harmful relationships has a significant difference. The interaction of gender and group membership on boys and girls relationship questionnaire scores was not significant.DiscussionThe results of this research showed that preventive training of students can change attitudes about harmful relations. But because of nonsignificant effect of follow up, these trainings must be executed in all high school levels continuously. These trainings can reduce the injuries of pathologic girl and boy relations. Perhaps execution of the same programs for parents can help adolescents toward a better understanding of girl and boy relations.