The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy on Bullying, Separation Anxiety and Academic Motivation of First Grade Elementary School Girls in Shahrekord

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral game therapy on bullying, separation anxiety and academic enthusiasm of first grade female students in Shahrekord city. The method of the current research was semi-experimental with a two-group pre-test-post-test design (test-control) and two-month follow-up. The statistical population of the research consisted of all first grade female students of Shahrekord, numbering 11,832 people. In this research, available sampling method was used and a total of 30 people were selected and randomly divided into two groups (experimental and control). The research tools included the Illinois Bullying Standard Questionnaire (2001), Spence et al.'s (1999) separation anxiety, and Fredericks' academic enthusiasm, Blumenfield, Paris (2004). Cognitive-behavioral game therapy intervention was implemented for the experimental group during 8 sessions of 30 minutes and the data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance and analysis of variance with repeated measurements in SPSS25 software. The findings indicated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral play therapy on bullying, separation anxiety and academic enthusiasm and their components. The results showed that the eta coefficient of the intervention effect on bullying was 0.738, separation anxiety was 0.623, and academic enthusiasm was 0.632 at a significant level of 0.001. The two-month follow-up showed that after two months of cognitive-behavioral game therapy training, there was no significant change in the variables of bullying, separation anxiety and academic enthusiasm. Therefore, this intervention can be used as an effective intervention to reduce bullying and separation anxiety of students and increase students' academic enthusiasm.