Active Games for Increasing Social and Emotional Competencies of Young Adults in Probation System: a One-Sample Trial Study in Izmir City in Turkiye

Plain-language summary

Objective: The goal of this one-sample clinical trial is to implement active games, including physical activities, that support the social and emotional competencies of individuals in probation sentence. Methods: The study was carried out with 50 young adult offenders. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) model, which defines five social and emotional skills (self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, social awareness), was used to support observation and game design. The present study involved the codesign of a total of 18 active games to develop these five competencies. The primary outcomes of the research were increased mental well-being and increased social emotional skills in participants receiving the AG4C program. The secondary outcome of the research was the regular participation of the participants in the program. In this study, two hypotheses were tested: "The ActiveGames4Change programme increases the psychological wellbeing of young adults on probation" and "The ActiveGames4Change programme increases the 5 basic skills of young adults on probation. This study was carried out with 50 young adult offender individuals (48 male and 2 female) who received probation measures in accordance with the court or prosecutor's decision for different crimes. The CASEL model, which defines social and emotional skills, was used to support observation and game design because it determines the characteristics of young people who are in the execution process. The skill set proposed by the CASEL model included skills such as "self-awareness", "self-management", "social awareness", "relationship skills" and "responsible decision-making". The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was employed to examine the impact of the intervention on participants' progression of competency levels before and after the intervention.

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