Effectiveness of Spiritual Strategy Training on the Resilience and Optimism of Newly-arrived Students

One of the newly arrived students is homesickness, loneliness, longing for the family and the city. Cope with the feeling of a variety of factors, including the amount of resilience and hope students and therefore religious coping style can increase the resilience and hope to them. The present study was performed to assess the effectiveness of spiritual strategy training on the resilience and optimism of newly-arrived students at Sistan and Baluchestan University in 2012-2013. This quasi-experimental study (pretest-posttest control-group design) was performed on newly-arrived students with feelings of homesickness, impatience, and concern, referring to the counseling center of Sistan & Baluchestan University in October 2012. In total, 48 students were selected via accessible sampling and were randomly divided to two equal groups. The intervention group was trained on spiritual strategies in eight sessions within four weeks and the control group received no interventions. The study instruments included Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (2003) and Snyder’s hope scale (1991), which were executed at baseline and after the interventions (after three weeks). The analysis of covariance was performed using SPSS version 17. After the intervention, the mean scores of resilience (P<0.001) and optimism (P<0.001) significantly improved in the intervention group in comparison with the control group. The findings showed that spiritual strategy training is effective in increasing people’s resilience and optimism.