Assertive skills: a comparison of two group interventions with Brazilian university students

Abstract

The improvement or acquisition of socioemotional skills contributes to the academic and personal adaptation of university students. The way students think about themselves and others influence their social skills and well-being. Considering the importance of social competence for professional practice in the face of new social realities, the university must invest in programs that promote the socio-emotional development of students. This study compared the effects of interventions based on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and Psychoeducation on assertive skills and subjective well-being. This study involved 25 undergraduate students of a public university. The students were randomly allocated to three groups, including the Control group, and they were evaluated by means of questionnaires, inventories, scales, and written evaluation of the group process. The program consisted of 10 meetings and a 6-week follow-up. Irrational beliefs were reduced and their assertive skills’ scores increased in the post-intervention and follow-up evaluations, regardless of the group. Only verbal reports from participants indicated an increase in well-being. The students’ written reports after the end of the meetings indicate that the two forms of intervention were evaluated as promoting change by the students. One of the limitations of the study is the size of the groups. Despite the very small sample size, the study highlights that developing a set of flexible beliefs is fundamental to the exercise of assertiveness.

The Impact of Resilience Interventions on University Students’ Mental Health and Well-Being: A Systematic Review

“…Stress was most frequently measured with a version of the perceived stress scale [98] (PSS) [46,49,[54][55][56][57]67,68,71,72,74,77,81,87,88,90]. Less frequently measured mental health-related outcomes were psychological distress (n = 4) [69,71,75,78], test anxiety (n = 2) [75,78], and negative affect (n = 1) [85]. Well-being or positive mental health was primarily measured through mental well-being (n = 8) [62,65,66,69,72,77,80,84], most commonly utilising the Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale [99] (WEMWBS) [62,65,69,77,84].…”

“…Well-being or positive mental health was primarily measured through mental well-being (n = 8) [62,65,66,69,72,77,80,84], most commonly utilising the Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale [99] (WEMWBS) [62,65,69,77,84]. However, other measures included positive mental health (n = 1) [88], quality of life (n = 2) [48,76], happiness (n = 3) [56,62,64,84], self-efficacy (n = 1) [50], life satisfaction (n = 2) [81,85], positive affect/emotion (n = 3) [59,73,85], and coping (n = 2) [46,82].…”

“…Eight studies implemented a non-randomised controlled trial (NRCT) study design [53,58,62,77,79,80,82,87]. Seventeen studies employed a pre-post without control group study design [48,50,51,59,60,[64][65][66][68][69][70]83,84,86,88,89,91], and twenty-two studies adopted a randomised controlled trial (RCT) study design [45][46][47]49,52,[54][55][56][57]61,63,67,[71][72][73][74][75][76]78,81,85,90].…”

“…Most of the studies recruited undergraduate students (n = 38) [45][46][47][49][50][51][53][54][55][56][57]59,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]71,72,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82]84,85,87,88,90,91]. Only four studies recruited graduate students [48,58,69,83] and a subset did not specify, but all those not specifying focused on medical students [60,70,73,86,89]; as such, the level may not have been reported as medical degrees can include a typical undergraduate degree within the higher medical degree.…”

“…For mindfulness interventions, ten used face-to-face delivery [47,53,60,67,69,71,77,81,87,89] and eight used online delivery [49,[55][56][57]72,86,88,90]. Within the psychoeducation interventions, around half were delivered using face-to-face sessions (n = 5) [48,64,70,79,85] with the same number using online delivery [46,54,62,84,91]. Only one study used hybrid delivery, which incorporated face-to-face and online components [65].…”