Effectiveness of the " children of divorce intervention program" on improvement of self-concept

Aim: Purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an intervention program designed to improve self-concept and resilience in children of divorce.
In this quasi experimental research with pre and posttest and a control group, 25 families who had 10-12 years old children were selected by convenience sampling. These families were selected from among 143 couples who had been referred to the family court branch in the city of Kashmar in Iran in 2012. A condition for participation in the study was that children of divorce had to live permanently with one of the parents. For 13 children in the experimental group, 15 sessions of the intervention program was administrated during a period of five weeks and three days per week. Twelve children were placed in a no intervention control group. The social emotional assets and resilience scale by Merrell, 2010 and the Piers-Harris’ children self-concept scale 1969 were used as research tools. ANOVA with repeated measures was used for analyzing the data.
Result indicated that intervention program did not change children`s self-concept but increased their resilience. Results of a three follow-up showed that this effect remained constant.
Children of divorce intervention program can be considered as an effective way to improve resilience of children and can be used for teaching single parents whose child lives with them in counseling and planning centers.