The development and evaluation of a psychological wellness programme for adults

[摘要] English: The aim of this study was the development and evaluation of an intervention programme aimed at promoting the psychological well-being of a group of adults. This research was motivated by the lack of scientifically evaluated intervention programmes focusing on the development of well-being of adults. There are intervention programmes that focus on well-being, but few of their findings can be verified and most of them had a one-dimensional focus on health and wellness and they focused more on early childhood development, adolescence, and the elderly (Ryff & Singer, 1998a, 2000). Very few studies like those of Els and De la Rey (2006) that focus on multi-dimensional psychological well-being were found in the South African context. This highlights the need for a scientifically verifiable intervention that develops the psychological well-being of adults in South Africa. An experimental pre-test/post-test design was used to conduct the study. An experimental group of 28 participants and a control group of 25 participants were involved in the process. Participants were recruited from large employers such as Eskom and the South African Police Service, local businesses and from church congregations in the Bloemfontein district. Initially an availability sample of 60 adults between the ages of 18 and 70 was involved in the programme. Unfortunately it was not possible in practice to keep this large group because many participants in both the experimental and control groups discontinued their participation before the end of the intervention. Data was gathered about the psychological well-being of both the experimental groups and the control groups through the use of the Multi-dimensional Wellbeing Scale (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Before the start of the intervention, both groups (experimental and control) did a pre-test. The experimental group then completed a 12 week intervention designed to enhance their psychological wellbeing. The intervention programme was designed to cover the six dimensions of well-being (purpose in life, self acceptance, positive relations, environmental mastery, personal growth and autonomy) identified by Ryff (1989). After the 12 weeks, both the experimental and the control group completed the Multidimensional Well-being Scale for the purpose of evaluating any changes effected by the intervention programme. Six month after the pre-test a second post-test was filled in by both the experimental and the control group to measure the longer term effect of the intervention. Data gathered showed the average differential score (from the pre- to the posttest as well as from the pre- to the follow-up test) was significantly higher for the experimental group than for the control group in five of the six subscales, namely purpose in life, self acceptance, positive relations, environmental mastery and autonomy. The deduction can therefore be made that the five subscales of the experimental group were maintained and did not decrease significantly over the period of three months following the first post-test. It can therefore be assumed that the intervention has had a short- and medium- term impact on the psychological well-being (specifically the five scales: purpose in life, self acceptance, positive relations, environmental mastery and autonomy) of the participants. It is interesting that no significant difference was found in the preand post-test scores of the dimension, personal growth. This finding can be explored in further research.

[发布机构] University of the Free State