Designing a Life Skills Training Package for Children and Determining Its Effectiveness on the Social Skills of Primary School Students

The present study was conducted with the aim of designing a life skills training package for children and determining its effectiveness on the social skills of primary school students. The research method was qualitative, Theme analysis according to Attride-Stirling (2001), and the research method in the quantitative part was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group and a two-month follow-up period. The statistical population of the research was made up of 12698 primary school students of Shahrekord city in the academic year of 2021-2022. The sample in this research consisted of 109 students of the first year of elementary school who were selected by the available sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (56 students in the experimental group and 53 students in the control group). The students in the experimental group received the life skills training package during 10 weeks in 10 sessions of 75 minutes as a group. The results showed that the life skills training package has sufficient content validity according to experts. Also, this training package had an impact on the social skills (P<0001; Eta=0.65; F=196.39) of social skills of primary school students. Based on the findings of the research, it can be concluded that the life skills training package by familiarizing students with their strengths and weaknesses, effective communication skills and empathy, emotion management, problem solving skills and creative thinking can be an efficient method to improve the social skills of primary school students be used.