| Teachers, counselors, and administrators struggle with the best methods for targeting their at-risk students. This research study focuses on the effectiveness of group activity therapy on the moral reasoning of at-risk high school students using a comparison test design. Group activity therapy is an intervention that focuses on using structured activities to express thoughts and feelings. The comparison group participated in group talk therapy, which focuses on talk as a means of communication among and between group members. The treatment group of ninth grade at-risk students (N = 39) received fifty minutes of group activity therapy once a week for ten weeks, while the comparison group (N = 48) received fifty minutes of group talk therapy once a week for ten weeks. Both the treatment and the comparison group took a pretest at week one of the study and a posttest at week twelve of the study. The instrument used for this study was the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT-2). An independent samples t-test and a paired samples t-test were used to determine the significance of the study. The paired samples t-test was found to demonstrate statistically significant increases in moral reasoning for the treatment group. This study supports the use of group activity therapy with at-risk high school students as a mode of intervention. |
