JOURNAL OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY
Year:2017 | Volume:6 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:8

Positive thinking skills training for children and adolescents, to strengthen and improve the positive relationship with the self and positive relationships with others and life can increase their self-esteem and academic achievement and seems to be very useful. According to the importance of positive thinking and its huge features, for example, designation in adolescents’ adjustment, this study is on the effect of teaching positive thinking skills on high school female student adjustment (social, emotional, and academic). The pretest and posttest control group is applied as an experimental design. The population is all female students in Sari high schools. The sample is 30 people who were randomly selected through cluster sampling. The experimental and control group included 15 participants. The research instrument was Sing and Sinha adjustment questionnaire administered before and after teaching positive thinking skills to the experimental group. Then, both the control group and the experimental took part in data collection. To analyze the data, descriptive and inferential statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and covariance analysis were used. The results revealed that teaching positive thinking skills has significant effect on social, emotional, academic adjustment of high school students.

The aim of the current study was to recognize the effect of positive thinking skills training on social adjustment and psychological capital of insociable young females. In this experimental study, we used a pretest/posttest design with a control group. The population included all high school freshman students in the academic year 2014-2015 in Hashtgerd. Two high schools were randomly selected. Based on the early scores of the initial implementation of the Social Adjustment Questionnaire, a sample of 60 participants lower than the average scores for the study were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. The data were collected through two questionnaires of student’s adjustment and psychological capital. Then, the positive thinking skills training was provided for the experimental group. The pretest and posttest were administered to both groups before and after the training for the experimental group. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and covariance analysis. Results of data analysis revealed that positive thinking training is effective on improving adolescent students' social adjustment and psychological capital.

Second language learners have difficulty in vocabulary learning since many English words have two or more meanings especially when they occur in idioms or expressions and deciding the correct meaning is demanding for EFL learners. So, this study aimed at investiating how 54 Persian students of English at intermediate and advanced levels which included 28 advanced students and 26 intermediate students, used their first language knowledge to comprehend and produce 3 types of English idioms, namely compositional, semi-compositional, and non-compositional ones. Compositional idioms, which are totally word for word translation of English idioms in learners mother tongue, like: Be on the tip of one’s tongue. Semi-compositional idioms which are syntactically or semantically similar but differ in one or more words, such as: for a rainy day. Non-compositional idioms which are totally different in translation from learners mother tongue, for example, drive someone up the heel. The students were divided into 4 groups; 2 experimentals and 2 controls. A pretest which included both comprehension and production tests was administered to each group. Then, the experimental groups received the treatment in the form of small conversations, but the control groups did not receive any treatment. In the last session all groups received an immediate posttest. After one month, a delayed posttest was adminstered. For the analysis of the data, a t-test and ANOVA were employed. Results in the four groups showed that compositional idioms had the highest correct responses, followed by semi-compositional idioms, and non-compositional idioms were the most difficult to comprehend and produce. In addition, in all groups students performed better in comprehension rather than production test.

The purpose of this research was to predict internet addiction based on perceived social support, loneliness and social phobia. It was a descriptive research which used correlation models. The population consisted of high school girls (junior and senior) in Karaj who were studying on the first semester of 2015-2016 academic year. The sample included 140 students and multi-stage cluster was used as the sampling method. The data was collected by questionnaires of internet addiction, perceived social support, loneliness, and social phobia. The data was analyzed using Pearson correlation and regression and the results demonstrated that the two variables of loneliness and social phobia can predict internet addiction and could be used to significantly predict internet addiction changes (p<0.05). Also, perceived social support cannot be the sole predictor of internet addiction (p>0.05). Therefore, it could be claimed that internet addiction is influenced by various factors among which the role of loneliness and social phobia as anxiety elements are noteworthy.

The purpose of this study was to compare temperament and character dimensions in students with and without obsessive–compulsive symptoms. The method of the present study was causal-comparative. The population included all high school students in Ardebil city during the academic year of 1393. In a cross-sectional study, 1000 students were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling from among public schools of Ardebil. After screening by obsessive-compulsive questionnaire and clinical interview, they were assigned to two groups, those with obsessive–compulsive symptoms (80) and those without such symptoms (80). To collect data, the temperament and character inventory were used. The results showed that the mean scores of students with obsessive–compulsive symptoms on persistence, selfdirectiveness, self-transcendence, and cooperativeness were significantly less than those without such symptoms, while the mean scores of harm avoidance were significantly higher than those without obsessive–compulsive symptoms (p<0.001). The results also did not show significant difference in novelty seeking and reward dependence. This finding has important implications for pathology of the obsessive-compulsive disorder. Accordingly, professionals can use these results for the prevention and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of empathy and sympathy questionnaire in students. For this purpose, 350 students (130 boys and 220 girls) from high schools in Parsabad were selected by simple random sampling and they responded to the empathy and sympathy questionnaire. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and LISREL 8.8. The results showed that Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, sympathy components were 0.84, 0.81 and 0.78, respectively. Also, Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the whole questionnaire was obtained to be 0.82. Test-retest reliability with interval of two weeks was obtained in the range of 0.71 to 0.78. The results of the first order and second order confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model has a good fit (RMSEA=0.056). According to the results, it can be said that empathy and sympathy questionnaire is a useful tool to measure empathy and sympathy in students.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of psychological capital in reducing teachers’ organizational silence. This research is descriptive (correlation) and applied. The population of the study consisted of all 1055 secondary school teachers of Khorramabad. The sample including 280 participants were randomly selected based on Morgan’s Table. Data collection instruments were organizational silence questionnaire (Vndayn, Ang, & Botero, 2003), and psychological capital questionnaire (Luthanz & Avolio, 2007) in five Likert scale. Using SPSS software version 18, data were analyzed by Pearson correlation as well as regression analysis. The results revealed that there is a negative significant (P<0.01) relationship between psychological capital and organizational silence. Finally, the findings showed that there is a negative relationship between components of psychological capital including self-efficacy, hope, optimism, but resiliency with organizational silence. So, with enhancement of the psychological capital, organizational silence is reduced and with self-efficacy, hope and optimism enhancement organizational silence is reduced.