The impact of sandtray therapy in group counselling towards children’s self-esteem

Abstract

This study is based on experimental design by making a comparison between control group and experimental group based on the pre and post test results. The objectives of the study is to identify the effect of sandtray therapy towards the improvement of the five self-esteem variables: general, social, family, academic, and lie. The subjects of the study were children aged 11 years old (n = 32) in Malaysia. The subjects were divided into two groups namely the sandtray group (n = 16) for the experimental group, who received sandtray therapy compared to control group (n = 16) who did not receive the treatment. The self-esteem inventory test will be drawn from Coopersmith (1967). The data were analyzed using SPSS version 22, Manova Recurrent Measurement, pre-test and post-test. The results of the Pillai Trace multivariate test showed that the main effects of the main variables of the post-test were F (5, 11) = 41.372, p <.05. Results from the Sphericity Assumed on table 1.6 below,  pretest and posttest of general self-esteem shows F (1, 15) = 49.853 α<.05. The results towards the social self-esteem shows F (1, 15) = 63.646 α<.05, to the parental self-esteem F (1, 15) = 82.924 α<.05, to the academic self-esteem F (1, 15) = 80.071 α<.05, and to lie self-esteem F (1, 15) = .732 α>.05.The findings of this study specify that sandtray therapy is a valuable therapeutic intervention to enhance the child’s self-esteem. Several recommendations were presented to parents, teachers, school administrators and Ministry of Education Malaysia were discussed in promoting children’s wellbeing.

Keywords: sandtray therapy, group counseling, children, self-esteem