Difference of a Counselor Facilitated Adolescent Boys Group on Behavior

• Main Author: Lessor, Clayton J.
• Language: EN
• Published: Capella University 2018
• Subjects: Behavioral psychology|Educational psychology|Counseling Psychology
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10751600

<p> Adolescent boys without strong and healthy male role modeling are more likely to act out, dropout, and be behavior referrals at school. A literature review revealed that fatherless (physically or emotionally) boys are two times more likely to drop out of school, which leads to greater opportunities to participate in antisocial behaviors. Identification of this knowledge gap revealed a potential solution as to what adolescent boys are going to receive, and the process designed to meet those missing developmental needs. The research question that was asked and answered: Is there a statistically significant difference in behavior between adolescent boys who attend a 10-week counselor-facilitated group, and adolescent boys that do not attend the adolescent boys&rsquo; group? The introduction of a rite of passage program using an operational model based on psychosocial theory and bioecological theory of human development provides an avenue to redirect fatherless adolescent boys toward healthy emotional adulthood and stay in school. The problem statement outlined Erikson&rsquo;s and Bronfenbrenner&rsquo;s theories of development and offered the pedagogy in the form of a rite of passage to address the healthy developmental needs of adolescent boys. The intervention group and the untreated group had 50 participants. A paired sample t test analyzed the data to determine if there is a difference in the variable before and after treatment comparing all subjects on five different variables. This result showed that boys&rsquo; behavior on average was better after attending the 10-week program. The untreated group effect was significant in a negative direction during the 10 weeks without treatment reflected in the after scores of each dependent variable. The meaningful change in higher scores indicated the effect on boys&rsquo; behavior in school getting worse. Future research could include studying a larger group of boys from a more diversified population and to continue collecting data for a longer time to study staying power of the changes.</p><p>