Open AccessThe Efficacy of a Holding Community Program—Promoting Social Reflection at School
Author(s) -
Anna Siegler,
Sára Serdült,
Fanni Csernus,
Lilla Dézma,
Izabella Ilea,
Sára Bigazzi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
changing societies and personalities
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 2
eISSN - 2587-8964
pISSN - 2587-6104
DOI - 10.15826/csp.2021.5.3.143
Subject(s) - intervention (counseling) , psychology , term (time) , test (biology) , interpersonal communication , harmony (color) , medical education , medicine , social psychology , nursing , paleontology , art , physics , quantum mechanics , visual arts , biology
The authors developed a Holding Community Program to achieve the following objectives: (a) to increase the perspective-taking capacity of adolescents; (b) to promote interpersonal and intergroup harmony; (c) to empower school students to be more (pro)active in their communities and in public life. Apart from the intervention itself, the study comprised a pre-test and a post-test and involved a total of 240 Hungarian high school students (159 female, 66.3%). The students were aged 14–18 (Mage=15.33; SDage=0.88). They were recruited from four high schools. Control groups (N=122) were chosen from the same institution and graded as experimental classes (N=118, 7 classes). Both immediate and long-term effects of the intervention (4–6 months after the intervention) were explored. Quantitative analysis of the data indicated that the two-day intervention program had significantly increased the students’ perspective-taking capacity (short-term: F(1,238)=6.03, p<0.05, long-term: n.s.) and efficacy beliefs (short-term: F(1,238)= 3.83, p=0.052, long-term: F(1,238)= 3.38, p<0.05). After the training, students were more willing to participate in collective actions (short-term: F(1,238)= 7.32, p<0.01, long-term: F(1,238)= 3.83, p<0.05). These results seem quite promising but the outcome was not significant regarding its effect on prejudice.