The Effectiveness of a Cognitive-Behavioral Counseling Program in Improving Social Skills and Reducing Feeling of Shyness among Adolescence Students in Jerusalem

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral counseling program in improving social skills and reducing feeling of shyness among adolescent students in Jerusalem. The study uses the quasi-experimental approach, on a sample of 30 male and female students, aged 15-17 years, who got lower social skills and higher feeling shyness scores. The sample is divided equally into two groups (experimental and control) and two scales are used: social skills scale and feeling shyness scale which are developed to collect the data, while a counseling program based on the cognitive-behavioral theory is designed to be applied on the experimental group, in 12 sessions, two sessions per week, each of 50 or 60 minutes duration. The results show that there are statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in the post-measurement of social skills and feeling shyness in favor of the experimental group. The differences are also significant between the pre and post measurements on the experimental group in favor of the post measurement, while there are no significant differences between the post and follow-up measurements among the members of the experimental group on social skills scale, and in favor of follow-up measurements on the shyness scale, which indicates the effectiveness of the implemented counseling program in improving social skills and reducing feelings of shyness, and its continued effectiveness after a six-week tracking period. The results also show that the effect of the counseling program amounted to .941 in improving social skills, and .958 in reducing feelings of shyness.