Examining the permanence of the effect of an empathy program for the acquisition of empathy skills on gifted adolescents

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the permanence of the effect of an Empathy Training Program, administered 8 months ago on gifted adolescents studying in 6 th and 7 th grades. The sample of this study consisted of 60 students with IQ scores of above 130 and studied in Enderun Gifted Children Center. Bryant's Empathy Scale for Children was administered to these students. Then, 16 students whose empathy scores were below 10 were chosen. These students were randomly separated into experimental and control groups. Pretest and posttest control group design was used and the follow-up study was administered 8 months later. Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon test were used to analyze. As a result of the analyses conducted to test the permanence of the effect of an applied training program, which was administered as the second stage of the study. There was a small increase in empathy scores of both groups, but there was a little more increase in scores of experimental group. However, as it was expected, this increase was not in a significant level. In conclusion, according to the obtained results, it was seen that the effect of an empathy-training program on gifted adolescents with low empathy scores was still permanent and this indicates that the applied empathy-training program is an effective and permanent study.