Social Skill Intervention For Junior High School Students With Poor Peer Relationship

Junior high school students are in the early adolescence, which is an importantperiod for individuals from child to adult, and is also a special stage of the whole life.During this period, they mature fast both physically and mentally. They are eager toget rid of the bondage of adults and expand their own spaces. As a result, peerrelationship has been an important part of the interpersonal relationship.Previous researches have shown that peer relationship plays important role in thedevelopment and social adaptation of individuals. Stable peer relationship can providefriendship support, enhancing adolescents’ sense of belonging, which is beneficial tothe development of ego-identity and social adaptation. But poor peer relationship maybe related to failure of academic achievement, disorder of self-development andmental health and even the adaptation in the future.Peer relationship is divided into two directions typically: friendship and peeracceptance. The former referrers to support, help and others one perceives from his orher friends, the later, otherwise, means extend for one is accepted by his or her peers.This study focused on the particular individual based on levels of peer acceptance.Individuals can be classified into groups of popular, controversial, rejected, neglectedand average based on the status of social recognition. The popular is considered asstudents with good peer relationship, while the rejected and ignored are grouped asthose who are in poor peer relationship. Intervention of social skills would be used tochange their peer status and improve their peer acceptance. The existing studiesdemonstrate that intervention of social skills could effectively increase the level ofpeer acceptance. Meanwhile, intervention of social skills has amounts of advantagesin promotion of peer relationships.This thesis contained two studies. Study1was an empirical study and to explore peer acceptance and peer rejection and their relevant factors, such as self-concept,depression and friendship quality. The distribution of adolescents’ peer status by peernomination so as to screen ones with poor peer relationship.152anticipants from aJunior High School in Jinan completed questionnaires of Depression, Self-Conceptand Friend Relationship. Study2was an intervention research. Students with poorrelationship were separated equally into experiment group and control group. In theexperiment group, students were trained with intervention of social skills by groupcounseling which lasted5weeks, with2times per week. At last, quality estimationand quantity estimation were used to test the effect of social skills intervention oneweek after the intervention ending.The results are as follows:1. Peer acceptance was significantly positively correlated with self-concept. Peerrejection was significantly negatively correlated with self-concept and friend support,and positively significantly correlated with depression.2. The distribution ratio of the five types of peer status was22.76%for thepopular,13.10%for the rejected,14.48%for the neglected,0.69%for thecontroversial and48.97%for the average.3. Compared with the popular students, those who with poor peer relationshipreported lower level of self-concept.4. Students with poor relationship got more acceptances by their peers afterintervention. It was concluded that social skills could improve their peer status.We should pay more attention to the peer relationship development of juniorhigh school students. In the further study strength from school and family would beconsidered to unite together to enhance the mental health of students through variouschannels.