Abstract:
The purpose of this quasi-experimental design was to study the effect of behavioral group counseling on enhancing public mind for youths of Juvenile Observation and Protection, Pattani Province. Subjects were 30 voluntary youths purposive selected by criteria and randomized into 2 groups equally 15 in the experimental and the control. Their ages were between 11 to 18 years old. The experimental group participated in behavioral group counseling for 14 sessions. Each lasted 60-90 minutes. The control group received regular daily programs from the Juvenile Observation and Protection center. The research tools were (1) Behavioral Group Counseling Program, and (2) The Public Mind Scale with reliability coefficient .90. The statistics used to analyzed data were mean, standard deviation, Wilcoxon Matched-pairs Signed rank test and Mann-Whitney U test.
The results were as follow:
1) After the trial, youths who participated in the behavioral counseling program had scores of public mind higher than those before the experiment (p<.05).
2. Those in the experiment group had scores higher than those of the control group (p<.01).