Integrative Group Counseling for Reducing Game Addiction Among Junior High School Students

Abstract

The purposes of this research are as follows: (1) to study game addiction behavior among junior high school students; and (2) to compare the game addiction behavior of the students before and after integrative group counseling. The subjects were divided into two groups: the first group were 1,080 junior high school students by simple random sampling. The second group using integrated group counseling to reduce game addiction behavior from a specific selection of junior high school students with a total score on the Game Addiction Quiz indicating that they were in a risk group for being addicted to the game and eight students voluntarily participated in group counseling. The research instruments used in this study included the following: (1) Game Addiction Screening Test-GAST; and (2) Integrative Group Counseling Program to Reduce Game Addiction Behaviors. The statistics used to analyze the data were mean, standard deviation and Wilcoxon Mated Pairs Singed- Rank Test. The research results were as follows: (1) overall, the game addiction behavior of junior high school students indicated their group was probably the most normal group, followed by a group at risk of being addicted to the game and the group addicted to the game, respectively; and (2) after joining integrative group counseling, the game addiction behavior of the students decreased in the normal group at a significantly significant level of .05.