This article discusses the development and validation of a Rational Emotive Education (REE) module for the stress intervention of Malaysian boarding school students. The module comprises four submodules, namely, Acceptance, Feelings, Beliefs, and Disputing Beliefs that have been developed by using the Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) approach. The validation stage which was evaluated by a panel of experts showed that the module's content validity value is .92. Meanwhile, the reliability testing performed using a set of questionnaires indicated the reliability coefficient of .93 This article demonstrates how a rigorous procedure can be applied to develop and validate an effective stress intervention module before it can be administered in an actual study. The results also demonstrate how the REE module which is based on the REBT approach can be applied by school counselors for the purpose of stress intervention in an educational setting.

No abstract

No abstract

The main function of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) is to produce skilled and knowledgeable workforce who are able to not only function with minimal guidance but also to contribute effectively to the hiring organizations. Many studies have indicated that most HEIs have somewhat similar course content and thrived at producing students with good academic achievement. But what differentiated them from one another is their ability to develop knowledge workers with the right employability skills or 'soft skills' such as communication, problemsolving, interpersonal and other skills deemed important as the foundations by which they require to function at work regardless of the nature of employment. This paper reports findings of a large-scale study looking into the soft skills attainment of Malaysian HEI graduates. A quantitative survey design was employed whereby data were obtained through the administration of an instrument called the Malaysian Soft Skills Scale (My3S). My3S consists of 180 items covering seven elements namely Communications, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Teamwork, Moral and Professional Ethics, Leadership, Life Long Learning and Entrepreneurial aspects. The mean scores for the seven My3S subscales were found to be between 6.3 and 7.8 from the maximum possible score of 10. Specifically, comparisons were made between graduates of public and private institutions with respect to the seven elements. Findings of the study suggest that, in general, students of public HEIs scored higher in all seven skills. With respect to gender, male students scored higher than female students in all elements except for teamwork skills and moral and professional ethics. A comparison between fields of study showed that for both types of HEIs, technical students scored the highest in all skills except for moral and professional ethics. Based on the findings of this study, it is suggested that in addition to offering specific courses to improve soft skills attainment, HEIs need to embed soft skills in their academic curricula.

This study examined the effects of communication and conflict resolution skills training on mental health among
Iranian couples based on the PREPARE/ENRICH program. In this study, mental health was measured by
General Health Questionnaires (GHQ28). The study adopted a pre- and post-control group design in
emphasizing the effects of communication training and conflict resolution skills on mental health. The
participants in this research consisted of couples who were referred to the researcher by counseling center. The
referrals were done for about two months in 2009. Their problems included marital problems and marital
conflicts, commonly categorized as marital dissatisfaction, which were identified after a formal interview, testing
and screening. In order to assign the experimental and control groups, purposive random sampling was employed.
One hundred and eight participants comprised of 54 married couples were divided equally between control and
experimental groups and the training sessions lasted for eight weeks. In this training program, researchers
focused on the dependent variable of mental health, while communication and conflict resolution skills training
were the independent variables. Specifically, the t-test statistical analysis was employed to test for the potential
significant differences in couples’ scores of mental health between (i) the pre- and post-training scores for
couples of the experimental group; and (ii) between the post-training scores for the couples of the two groups.
The results indicated that teaching communication and conflict resolution skills had significant positive effects
on the mental health scores obtained from the studied couples