Effect of group assertive training on social anxiety, social skills and academic performance of female students

The present study examined the effects of group assertive training on social anxiety, social skills and academic performance of female freshmen in Bahmaei high school. The related population includes all freshmen in Bahmaei high school in 2008. The sample includes 60 students selected by random multistage sampling method. They were randomly divided into experiment and control groups. The instruments used in this study were Watson & Friend's Anxiety Scale and Eisler & Miller's Social Skills Rating Scale. The research design was pretest- posttest with the control group. For analyzing the data MANOVA method was used. The Results of MANOVA showed that, at least there is a significant difference between two groups in one of the dependent variables. Then, the significant difference between two groups in all three dependent variables was then confirmed by ANOVA method. Group assertive training increased social skills and school performance and decreased social anxiety of experimental groups in compare with control groups.