An Experimental Study: Does the Transactional Analysis Theory-based Psycho-education Program Affect Students’ Communication Skills?

Abstract

Transactional analysis theory has emerged as a psychotherapy approach that includes individual and group applications and draws attention to individuals’ communication with both themselves and others. In this study, the effects of an 11-session transactional analysis theory-based psycho-education program on the communication skills of Turkish undergraduate students doing their major in social services and consultancy department was examined. The participants of the study were selected through criterion sampling, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. The study was carried out with 16 participants, 9 females and 7 males, who took part in the research voluntarily. “Personal Information Form” and “The Communication Skills Scale” were used as data collection tools. The present study is quantitative. The research design was a single group pretest-posttest model which is one of the weak experimental research designs. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test, one of the non-parametric tests, was used for data analysis. Based on the results, it can be said that the 11-week psycho-education program, which was designed to increase the communication skills of the students, had a significant effect on increasing the communication skills of the students.