The Effect of Assertiveness Training on Increasing the Assertiveness and Social Maturity of First-Grade High School Girl Students in Tehran

The current study is aimed at examining the impact of assertiveness training on the social maturity and assertiveness of the first-grade high school girl students in Tehran. The Assertiveness Self-Report Inventory (Herzberger, Chan, and Katz, 1984) was administrated to 211 first-grade high school students. Thirty students whose scores on this test were lower than the median were selected as the target group and were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. As an intervention program, the assertiveness training was administered to the 15 subjects of the experimental group over ten ninety-minute sessions. Rao’s Social Maturity Scale (Rao, 1973) was utilized to measure social maturity at the pre-test and post-test stages. The results of data analysis indicated a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group on assertiveness and social maturity. Thus, it can be said that assertiveness training program improves assertiveness and social maturity and assertiveness intervention models are capable of changing behavior including the behavior of female high school students.