The Effectiveness of Life Skills Education With Religious Approach to Safety, Mental Health and Self-Esteem in Elementary School Students

Abstract

This study is concerned with the effectiveness of religious life skills training, and its impact on the mental health and self-esteem of elementary school children. The statistical population of the study includes all the male students studying in fifth grade of elementary school in district 12 of Tehran in the educational year 2011-12. Method: Morgan Table was used for determining the size of the sample which was 60. The sixty students were randomly assigned to the experimental and the control groups. A pre-test was administered to both groups and then the experimental group received 16 sessions of religious life skills instruction in 16 weeks. The present study is quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. Research Tools: Goldberg General Health Questionnaire GHQ-28, Coopersmiths Self-Esteem Inventory (GCSE) and the Practical Guide to the Instruction of Religious Life Skills were the instruments used in this research. The reliability of Goldbergs General Health Questionnaire was reported to be 0.91 and the reliability of the scale of Coopersmiths Self- Esteem Inventory with bisection method was 0.83 and with Cronbachs alpha was 0.84. To test the hypotheses, T- test for independent groups was used. Findings: Religious life skills training improves students mental health. Religious life skills training improves students self-esteem. The impact of life skills training on physical symptoms of anxiety and insomnia were significant, but the impact was insignificant on social dysfunction and severe depression in students. The effectiveness of life skills training on global self-esteem, social self-esteem and academic self-esteem was significant, but was insignificant on family self-esteem. The research method of the study is quasi-experimental.