Impact of Teaching Life Skills (Perception of Problem Solving and Decision Making) on Hopefulness and Happiness of Martyrs and Veterans Children

Aims: Life skills teaching programs are the applications of psychology in various personal and social fields, held with the aim of promoting mental and physical health and preventing mental, physical and social harm. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of life skills teaching (perception of problem solving and decision making) on hopefulness and happiness of martyrs and veterans children. Materials & Methods: In this applied semi-experimental research with the pre-test post-test with control group design, between 2015 and 2016, 40 children of martyrs and veterans in Tehran were selected by convenient sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (each group 20 people). To collect the data, standardized Oxford Happiness Questionnaire and Miller Hopefulness Questionnaire were used. The experimental group received 11 sessions life skills teaching (each session one hour) for 2 weeks (perceived problem solving and decision making) and the control group did not receive interventional control. The data were analyzed by SPSS 15, using multivariate variance analysis and multivariate and one-way covariance analysis. Findings: In the post-test stage, the mean scores of happiness and hopefulness variables increased, which were significant in the happiness variable compared to the control group (p=0.006, F=4.534), but there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding the hopefulness variable (p=0.246, F=0.864). Conclusion: Life skills teaching (perception of problem solving and decision making) is effective in increasing the happiness of martyrs and veterans children, but it does not affect their hopefulness increase