The effect of the "Happy Highway" game on communication of elementary students in initial group counseling sessions

Abstract

Counseling children is becoming more crucial given the stresses that children deal with on a daily basis. Drugs, violence, death and dysfunctional family situations are growing concerns for today’s youth. The use of games in initial group counseling sessions pertaining to elementary students may increase affective communication. Since group sessions at the elementary school level typically meet five times, it is important to develop rapport within the group as soon as possible. The Happy Highway game (Aid Association for Lutherans) was used to determine these effects. As experimental study included a control group of twenty randomly assigned elementary students. Ten students played the game, and ten students used a list of questions from the game in initial group counseling sessions. The data was collected by the researcher, a trained observer, using a tally of verbal affective responses. The data was then compared by a Chi-square test to examine the independence of the two groups studied. It was hypothesized that the use of the game with elementary students in initial group counseling sessions would increase affective responsiveness. The null hypothesis was that there was no difference in affective communication between the groups that used the game and those groups that used only the questions from the game. The results of communication differences were opposite of the direction hypothesized in the formation of this study. It was expected that students in groups exposed to the game board format would be more likely to demonstrate affective communication behaviors. Measured behaviors reported in this study showed greater responsiveness in the group exposed only to the game questions. Since there was not a significant difference between the two groups of students using the game or using the questions from the game, the researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis. The results from this study may be different under ideal circumstances, which would include larger groups of samples, video recording the sessions for more accurate measure of response and including a third group that uses no tool at all. This study showed no significant difference between two groups of students in group counseling sessions at the elementary school lever, using the Happy Highway game, and using game questions only. However, there is reason for further study of the use and importance of games in initial counseling sessions.