Comparison of the Effectiveness of Psycho-social Empowerment and Emotion Regulation Training on Communication Skills and Social Adjustment among Adolescent Girls

In recent years, various complementary approaches of the emotion regulation model have been presented. One of these approaches is the psycho-social empowerment program. The empowerment program was introduced by Anderson and his colleagues around 1990 and was considered as a suitable training method for different groups. The main difference between this training program and traditional training programs is that instead of being considered a method, technique or strategy, this method plays the role of a guide for people with disabilities and their families. The psycho-social empowerment program, which is recently used in psychology for prevention in various fields, emphasizes the training of general personal and social skills and is considered the most effective by many scientific and research institutions, including the American Psychological Association. Appropriate prevention approach is recognized and praised. There are various empirical evidences for the effectiveness of the psycho-social empowerment program. For example, in a study, Kawada and Nojima found that the empowerment program has a significant effect on well-being and mental health. Karmusi et al. also found that the psycho-social empowerment program can improve communication and social skills in the school environment. Also, Ozar-Uztin and Hikdormaz in a study concluded that the use of psychological empowerment program improves resilience and adaptability and also reduces post-traumatic stress symptoms in cancer patients. A review of research literature confirms that emotion regulation training and psycho-social empowerment program are effective on various health indicators and skills. However, the review of the research literature shows that there is no study that shows the effectiveness of these approaches. As a result, the current research seeks to answer the question, is there a significant difference between the effectiveness of psycho-social empowerment and emotion regulation training on communication skills and social adaptation of adolescent girls in Gachsaran city?

The semi-experimental research method is pre-test-post-test-follow-up and control group, and the protocol of this study was approved by the ethics committee of Shahrekord Islamic Azad University with the code IR.IAU.SHK.REC.1400.025. Then, the members of the two experimental groups were exposed to the independent variable; But the control group did not receive any intervention. The statistical population of the present study was all the students of the second secondary level of Gachsaran city in the academic year 2020-2021, whose number was estimated to be about 2 thousand according to the report of the Department of Education. The sampling method in this study was purposeful. According to the research plan, a sample of 75 people was selected according to the inclusion criteria. The sample members were placed in two experimental and control groups by simple random replacement, and thus, there were 25 people in each group.
Before and after the implementation of emotion regulation group training and also two months after the end of the intervention, research questionnaires were distributed to the experimental and control groups. Due to the extent of the spread of the coronavirus disease and the limitation in the provision of psychological services, the interventions were carried out offline and through the Google Do web application. Google 2 application provides users with the possibility of making group video calls with the whole world with high resolution. It seems that among the video chat software based on mobile, this software has better usability. In addition, due to the health considerations related to the epidemic period of the corona disease, the questionnaires were uploaded to the Google Form web application and the link to the questionnaire was sent simultaneously to all the selected participants. It should be noted that due to the easy access to the WhatsApp social network and its generality, the questionnaire link was sent through this social network. Due to the time-sensitivity, the participants were requested to complete the questionnaire within 24 hours after sending the link. Manjemizadeh's Interpersonal Communication Skills Questionnaire and Bell's Social Adaptation Questionnaire were used to collect information.

The results showed that the significance level (P = 0.347) calculated for the value of X2 (4.462) is not significant and shows that the three groups are equal. In order to compare the group training of emotion regulation and psycho-social empowerment on the communication skills and social adaptation of adolescent girls in Gachsaran city, the multivariate covariance analysis test was used along with the minimum significant difference post hoc test. The results show that there is no difference between emotion regulation group training and psycho-social empowerment group training in the variable of communication skills (P<0.05); However, the difference between both groups with the control group is significant (P<0.05), which shows the effectiveness of the mentioned training on the communication skills of teenage girls. In the variable of social adaptation, no significant difference was observed between group training in emotion regulation and group training in psycho-social empowerment (P<0.05); But the difference between both groups with the control group was significant (P<0.05).
According to the results, which shows that the significance level calculated for the F value in significance tests is lower than the determined alpha value (α = 0.05), it can be claimed that the interactive effect of time on the group It is meaningful. The results showed that there is no significant difference between the post-test and follow-up stages of both types of intervention regarding the variables of communication skills and social adaptation (P<0.05). As a result, it can be said that the results were stable. However, the difference between pre-test and post-test and pre-test and follow-up stages in the variables of communication skills and social adaptation is significant, which shows the effectiveness of this intervention on the aforementioned variables.

The results show that there is no difference between emotion regulation group training and psycho-social empowerment group training in the variable of communication skills and social adaptation; However, the difference of both groups with the control group is significant, which shows the effectiveness of the aforementioned trainings on the communication skills and social adaptation of adolescent girls. Based on the findings, psycho-social empowerment group training, like emotion regulation group training, improved communication skills and social adaptation, and there was no difference in terms of effectiveness.
One of the limitations of the current research was the epidemic of the corona virus disease and the closure of schools, which caused the training to be held virtually. Due to the impossibility of face-to-face visits, the collection of information in the current research was done in a virtual way, which was associated with limitations for providing the necessary information regarding the importance of completing the information. The findings of the current research are limited to teenage girls, and caution should be observed in generalizing the results to other teenage boys or teenagers of other age groups. Considering that the results showed that psycho-social empowerment group training has a significant effect on communication skills and social adaptation, it is suggested to use this program in the form of extra-curricular meetings in schools in order to improve the mentioned skills. Since the result of the present research showed that group training of emotion regulation is a successful method in improving communication skills and social adaptation and it somehow makes structural and sustainable changes; Therefore, it is recommended to include the emotion regulation training program in school curricula from the very beginning.