Effect of anger management training on aggression and anxiety of working children

Anxiety and aggression among working children during childhood can be considered a predictor of risky behaviors for the rest of the life. One of the educational skills for working children is the ability to cope with the emotions and control anger. This study was aimed to study the effect of anger management training on working children’s anxiety and aggression in Isfahan, Iran.

A quasi-experimental pretest/post-test design with the control group was conducted on the 60 working children recruited from two centers by convenience sampling method in Isfahan (Iran). The Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992) and Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (Spence, 2003) were completed by the participants in pre-test and post-test. The experimental group attended in eight sessions of 60-minute classes.

The results revealed that, as far as the group was concerned, there was a significant difference between anxiety and aggression of the participants according to group membership (experimental and control groups) after adjusting the effect of pretest variables (P˂0.001).

As a whole, teaching anger control is one of the important factors influencing the aggression and anxiety of working children. As such, it is suggested that various types of educational techniques for control anger can be considered in order to reduce aggression and anxiety in working children.