The purpose of the study is to develop a group counseling program to improve anger control ability for college couples who have difficulty with anger control and to verify its effect. For this, in the first-year study, the research on the necessity of ...
The purpose of the study is to develop a group counseling program to improve anger control ability for college couples who have difficulty with anger control and to verify its effect. For this, in the first-year study, the research on the necessity of developing a group counseling program was conducted, and a need assessment for the program development was conducted by conducting in-depth interviews with a total of five couples(10 people) who had the experience of anger. As a method of analyzing the collected interview data, a number of researchers participated in the analysis process and selected a consensual qualitative research(CQR) to confirm the frequency of verbal responses. The analysis results showed that there were two domains which are 'conflict factors in college couples', 'reactions caused by conflicts in college couples', followed by 5 categories, and 12 subcategories. The interview results showed that the anger of college couples was present in conflict situations, and the conflict caused various negative emotions, including anger. Accordingly, the purpose of the second-year study was to develop a group counseling program that aims to improve the emotional regulation ability of couples in conflict situations and to verify its effectiveness.
To carry out the second-year study, the contents of the group counseling program for improving the emotional regulation ability of college couples were organized based on the results of the study conducted in the first-year, and a scale was selected to verify the effectiveness of the program. The preliminary program was supervised by three experts to confirm the contents, and then a total of 10 sessions(15 hours) were conducted once a week for 3 college couples(6 people). After the preliminary program was implemented, the experts supervised the content, and after the contents of the program were revised and supplemented, the contents of this program were confirmed. The program was conducted on 8 college/unmarried couples(16 people) once a week, a total of 10 sessions(15 hours), and was conducted non-contact. The results of analyzing the effectiveness of the program with 11 college/unmarried couples(22 people), who participated in the preliminary program and the program, showed that the relationship satisfaction, emotional communication(degree of affection or support, emotional intimacy, emotional understanding, and empathy to the lover), validity(degree of understanding when talking to the lover about emotion), distinction of emotion(degree to which a lover understands that it is okay to feel complicated emotions), consent(degree to which a lover realizes that most people feel the same way as they do) have significantly improved.
The implications of this study are as follows. Firstly, the results of the first-year study can be used as basic data to help college couples understand the solution strategies used in conflict situations and to explore better strategies for conflict resolution. Secondly, the group counseling program developed in the second year study can be used as a practical tool in the counseling field or related institutions when it is intends to intervene on college couples and unmarried adult couples with conflict experience. Finally, this study is meaningful by utilizing the emotional schema therapy as the theoretical basis which is a useful tool to understand the individual's emotions, this research provides the basis for the related follow-up studies. In particular, the group counseling program activity sheets and manuals developed as a result of this study are expected to strengthen the competence of counselors and to provide an understanding of emotional schema therapy, which lacks the empirical research compared to other psychotherapy in Korea.