THE EFFECTS OF GESTALT GROUP COUNSELING ON HAPPINESS OF NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

This Quasi-experimental research aimed to study the effects of Gestalt’s group counseling on happiness of nursing students. The population were 16 nursing students who had happiness score less than 25 percentile. The eligible students were randomly selected by simple random sampling to divide into two groups: experimental group and control group, with 8 students in each groups. The instruments used in this study included happiness scale and Gestalt’s group counseling Program. The data collecting procedure was divided into three phases: The pre-test, post-test, and the follow up phases. The data were analyzed through the use of the repeated-measures analysis of variance: one between-subjects variable and one within-subjects variable. The Bonferroni Method was used for comparison.

              The results indicated the significant interaction between the program and the duration of experiment at 95 percent confident interval. The nursing students in the experimental group demonstrated significantly higher happiness score than the control group at 95 percent confident interval, in both post-test and follow up phases. The post-test and the follow up phases’ happiness scores of the experimental were also significantly higher than the pre-test’s at 95 percent confident interval.