Effect of stress inoculation training on psychological hardiness and cognitive life skills in relation to stress among school students

Abstract

The study was conducted to study the effect of stress inoculation training on psychological hardiness and cognitive life skills in relation to stress among school students. Non-equivalent pre-test and post-test control group design was used for the study. The sample consisted of 118 students of 9th class from the 2 schools of Chandigarh. There were 56 students in control group and 62 students in experimental group. The experiment was conducted for two months during which the experimental group was provided intervention. The data was collected using the scales Psychological hardiness scale (Novack, 1990), Cognitive life skills (i.e.)Solving Problems Survey (Developed and validated by Barkwan and Machnes, 2002) and Making Decisions in Everyday Life Scale (Developed and validated by Mincemoyer, Perkins and Munaya, 2001) and Stress scale (Gross and Seebab, 2014). 2 x 2 factorial design was used and data was analysed using ANCOVA. The results revealed that there was statistically significant effect of intervention on scores of Psychological Hardiness and Decision Making Skills of control and experimental group students but not on scores of Problem Solving Skills. There was no statistically significant difference on the scores of Psychological Hardiness and Cognitive Life Skills of students with high and low levels of stress. Also there was no statistically significant interaction effect of stress inoculation training and levels of stress on scores of psychological hardiness and decision making skills but there was statistically significant interaction effect of stress inoculation training and levels of stress on scores of problem solving skills of secondary school students. newline