The doctoral thesis in the Department of Psychological Counseling and Educational Guidance at the University of Basra, College of Education for Humanities, discussed (The effect of emotional techniques and the method of modifying attitudes in reducing psychological distress among orphaned female secondary school students) by the student Zahraa Saleh Abdul Sahib Al-Saeedi.
The research aims to identify the effect of emotional techniques and the method of modifying attitudes in reducing psychological distress among orphaned female students in secondary schools. To achieve this, the researcher adopted a set of null hypotheses that she sought to verify their validity using the usual scientific methods.
The current research community consisted of orphaned female students in government secondary schools in Basra Governorate for the academic year (2023-2024), as the study community amounted to (845) female students, distributed over 31 schools throughout Basra Governorate. A representative sample of the characteristics of the original community was drawn, amounting to (400) as a building sample, and (30) students for the stability sample, while the size of the final application sample was (267) students (30) as the experimental sample. The researcher used the experimental method and adopted the design of (pre-post measurement for two experimental groups and a control group). The researcher built a psychological distress scale and verified its apparent validity, as well as (structural validity and confirmatory factor validity), and extracted its stability in two ways, as the stability coefficient by the Cronbach's alpha method reached (0.72) and the test-retest method, as the correlation coefficient between the two applications reached (0.84). And building two guidance programs, one based on emotional techniques and the other based on the attitude modification method, and preparing an information form, and verifying the apparent validity of the tools by presenting them to
The researcher used a number of parametric and non-parametric tests to analyze the collected research data using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The research reached the results that the experimental sample in the two experimental groups and the control group had high psychological distress, with no statistically significant differences between them in the results of the pre-measurement. There were statistically significant differences between the two measurements (pre-post) and at a significance level (0.01) among orphan students in the two experimental groups after the first experimental group was exposed to treatment using (emotional techniques), and the second experimental group was exposed to treatment using (the attitude modification method). While the differences between the two measurements were not statistically significant for the control group. Thus, the results showed the presence of an effect of the two programs in reducing psychological distress when comparing the results of the post-measurement of the three groups and in favor of the two experimental groups. The counseling intervention using the emotional techniques method does not differ from the attitude modification method in its effective ability to reduce psychological distress among orphan students. In light of these results, the current research concluded with a set of recommendations and proposals, the most important of which is adopting the two programs as a work guide for psychological counselors for both genders in schools, guidance units, and orphan care institutions
