A social skills development training programme to improve adolescents' psychological resilience and emotional intelligence level

Study objectives: This experimental study was designed using pretest, posttest, follow-up, and control group models to explore the effect of a structured education program on adolescents' psychological resilience and emotional intelligence level. Method: This study was conducted on 70 students at a high school in Turkey. A total of 36 students were assigned to the intervention group and 34 students to the control group. Data were collected using the Adolescent Information Form, Resilience Scale (RS), and Emotional Intelligence Evaluation Scale (EIES). The scales were administered in the intervention group before initializing the education program, who later received a 7-week education program. One month after the administration of the education program, the scales were again administered during follow-up. Findings: It was found that the education program improved and increased adolescents' psychological resilience and total emotional intelligence level despite not being significant (p > 0.05). During the follow-up, adolescents in the intervention group demonstrated an important difference in follow-up scores in the optimism and communication subdimensions of the RS compared to that in the posttest scores, and the intervention group had a higher average total score in the EIES compared to that in students in the control group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Our results suggest that the training program has positive effects on improving adolescents' psychological resilience and emotional intelligence levels, especially in the long run, which needs to be developed and applied in different samples.