THE DEVELOPMENT OF SINGLE MOTHERS’ INNER STRENGTH ENHANCEMENT MODELS BASED ON NARRATIVE COUNSELING THEORY

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to study the factors of inner strength of single mothers and the effect of single mothers’ inner strength enhancement models based on narrative counseling theory. The research was conducted in two phases. The first phase was a confirmatory factor analysis. The research instruments is the Inner Strength for Single Mother Scale developed by researcher with the coefficient reliability at 0.97.  The sample was 304 single mothers.  In second phase, study to the effect of single mothers’ inner strength enhancement models based on narrative counseling theory. The sample consisted of 40 single mothers who had low to middle scores (1.80 - 3.40) of inner strength. They were randomly assigned to three experimental groups and one control group. The instruments are the 3 models of Narrative Inner STRENGTH Models was developed by the researcher. The model 1 was the individual counseling model was eight sessions of individual counseling for participated in experimental group 1. The model 2 was the one day (8 hrs.) psychological activities group for participated in experimental group 2 and the model 3 was, online self-learning of eight lessons for participated in experimental group 3. The control group let a normal life. The statistics used were confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of variance with repeated measures.

          The research results were as follows: It was found in phase 1 that the Inner Strength of single mother consisted of four factors. They were Connectedness, Creativity, Firmness, and Flexibility. The structural relationship of these four factors was consistent with the empirical data. The adjusted model was valid and well fitted to the empirical data (  = 164.45, df = 138, p-value = 0.06, Chi-square/ df = 1.19, SRMR = 0.03, RMSEA = 0.02, CFI = 1.00, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.90, CN = 306.45). In phase 2 was found that the results of applying the Narrative Inner STRENGTH Models to inner strength of single mothers were that: the three experimental groups had mean inner strength scores in the post-test and the follow-up which were higher than the control group and the pre-test  statistically significant at .05 level.          It could be concluded that the three models based on the narrative counseling theory could enhance to inner strength of single mothers.