Effect on Turkish high school students of a psychoeducation program for developing forgiveness

We examined whether a psychoeducation program developed based on the REACH forgiveness intervention model made a difference to adolescents’ tendency to forgive. The study group included 39 Turkish high school students (30 girls and nine boys) aged between 15 and 17 years, who volunteered to take part in the research. The study sample was divided into intervention (n = 13), control (n = 13), and placebo (n = 13) groups. The students completed the Forgiveness Scale for Adolescents as a pretest–posttest measure. The intervention group attended eight sessions of a psychoeducation program. To control for confounding variables (e.g., group leader and group assembly effects), the placebo group took part in eight sessions of independent group activities unrelated to forgiveness. The control group did not receive any tuition. Mixed analysis of variance was applied to the data. The findings indicated that the effect of the eight-session psychoeducation program on enhancing students’ forgiveness tendency, although small, was positive.