Effect of Life Skill Training on Government School Adolescents: Exploratory Study

INTRODUCTION

Life skills have been defined as ―The abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that facilitate individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life‖ (WHO). „Adaptive‟ means that a person is flexible in attitude and is able to adjust in different situations. „Positive behavior‟ indicates that a person is forward viewing and even in hard situations, can find a gleam of hope and chances to find solutions. Life skills supports youths to transfer successfully from childhood to adulthood by healthy growth of social and emotional skills. It helps in the development of social skill and problem solving skills, which in opportunity to help adolescents to create their own identity and helps to assess possible positive and negative influences of the situation.

Jose et al. (2014) evaluated a group of life skill trainers in undertaking life skills training among girl children residing at Abhayabala. The author and his team administered life skills training spanning 14 sessions through the medium of social group work, for 43 girl children, scale was used to be pre and post intervention assessments of the girl children and the same was evaluated to determine the effectiveness of the life skill training in enhancing self-esteem and furnishing them to live a life of self-worth and dignity. The findings of the study revealed that the intervention had helped to improve self-esteem improvement in self-esteem generated better self-awareness, enhancing self-image, assertiveness, critical thinking and reflection about oneself and develop interpersonal relationship, etc.

To find the Effect of life skill training on Government school adolescent students.

The aim of the study is to find out the effect of life skill training on government school adolescents.

1. To study the effect of life skill training on adolescents of government schools.

―There is a significant effect of life skill training on government school adolescents‘

The present research study is exploratory in nature.

Independent Variable: Government school adolescents Dependant Variable: life skill training

Life skill scale developed by Dr.Vranda (2009), there 115 statements in the scale, scale assess the 10 life skill areas and there are positive and negative statements. Scoring of statements are 1 for never, 2 for rarely, 3 for sometimes, 4 for usually and 5 for Always and reverse for negative items. Thus, the possible minimum score is 115 and maximum score is 575.Based on the scores obtained from 850 subjects, 3 levels of life skills scores have been obtained. Percentile scores were computed to derive 3 range of cut off scores for the overall 115-items scale. At the 33, At 66th rd. percentile the score was 397 and percentile the score was 437. Thus, the three levels of score can be summarized as follows: Less than 397 - Low Life Skills, 398 - 437 - Moderate Life Skills 438 and above - High Life Skills

Pre-test: Permission was sought from the school head masters of respective schools from which sample was collected. Subsequently subjects were personally contacted to participate in the study and rapport was established. Before handing over the questionnaire a detailed explanation of the purpose of the study was explained. After obtaining their consent, Life skill scale was administered. The subjects were asked to follow the instructions as mentioned in the questionnaire. Doubts were explained and they were guaranteed that their responses would be kept confidential. After the subjects answered the questions the questionnaire Intervention session / life skill training was provide for the students according module prepared by the researcher for the certain periods. Post-test: same procedure followed as in pre-test to collect the data after training periods. The data thus collected was subjected to further statistical analysis

Objective of the study is to examine the effect of life skill training on government school adolescent, and to compare pre-test and post test result of government school adolescents. To find out the difference t‘ test was calculated, the obtained results has been shown in the Table 1:

An observation of Table 1 reveals the Mean, SD and t‘ value of government school adolescent life skill scale. The mean scores Pre-test on life skill scale, of government school adolescent students is 391.93 which indicates low life skill, with an SD of 34.14. The mean scores in post-test is 420.73 which is moderate life skill, with an SD of 31.65. The obtained t‘-value is 3.38 which is significant at 0.05 level. Hence the hypotheses which states that ―There is a significant effect of life skill training on government school adolescents‘‖ is accepted.

By looking at the scores Government school adolescents have obtained higher mean values in post-test than pre-test on life skill scale which shows that life skill training had influenced on government adolescents. Present study was supported by earlier study by Parvathy and Renjith (2015), titled ‗Impact of Life Skills Education on Adolescents in Rural School‘, The result of the study shows that the experimental and experiment–delayed groups were found similar in their socio-demographic status. The study has revealed significant impact of life skills education training on adolescents population, so it is difficult to generalize. • Different Geographical area not considered. • Different age group can be considered for study.

• More sample size can be taken. • Different Geographical area and age group can be considered for study.

Life Skills help in developing positive and flexible attitude for life among adolescent which is considered as transformation stage. Enhancing Life Skills enables us to adapt to situations and people and helps us to lead a healthy and positive life. All people have inherent Life Skills but to get the best out of them we need training and get them shaped. Present study result showed that school adolescents have obtained higher mean values in post-life skill training than pre life skill, which indicates that life skill training had impact on government adolescents.

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Research Scholar, Department of Psychology, Gnana Bharathi, Bangalore University, Bengaluru, India