The Effectiveness of Group Reality Therapy on the Attitude To mate selection of Girls ready for Marriage

Choosing a spouse is a complicated process for all young people. The realistic choice of spouse helps the stability of marriage, however, to choose a spouse who is known as an important source of psychological and practical support for a person in dealing with life's problems, awareness and education are needed. This need becomes more apparent when the complexities of today's society make choice more difficult. Therefore, the present research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of group reality therapy on the attitude towards choosing a spouse in girls ready for marriage.

The present research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the research included all the girls ready to get married in Kohak neighborhood of Tehran (District 22) in 2023. 30 participants were selected by convenience method in two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. Then, the experimental group received group reality therapy intervention for 8 two-hour sessions during two months. The measurement for collecting information in the research was the attitudes about romance and mate selection scale by Cobb, Larson, and Watson (2003). The data was analyzed by MACOVA and with SPSS version 26 software.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the post-test in the attitude scores of choosing a spouse in girls ready to marry in the experimental group, while this significant difference was not seen in the control group(P<0.05). Based on the effect size values, the effectiveness of group reality therapy on the attitude of choosing a spouse in girls ready for marriage in the experimental group was 0.23.

Group reality therapy is a suitable psychological intervention for young girls to be aware of themselves and the choices they face in their lives. During the therapy sessions, the participants were taught to become more aware of themselves and were also encouraged to redefine their beliefs about life, the world, themselves, and choosing a mate.