Assessing the Effectiveness of Communicational Skills in Residents’ Resiliency in Residential Complexes

Ghodsi Ahghar ¹ ; and Zahra Aghayan ² ¹

Department of Education, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, IR Iran ² School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, IR Iran

*Corresponding author: School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, IR Iran. Tel: +98-9353845713, E-mail: zara.aghayan@gmail.com .

Scimetr. 2015 April; 3(2): e28072 , DOI: 10.5812/scimetr.28072

Article Type: Research Article; Received: Feb 18, 2015; Accepted: Mar 8, 2015; epub: Apr 15, 2015; ppub: Apr 2015

Abstract

Background: Without any knowledge of apartment life customs, we moved from houses to this new structure.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of communicational skills in resiliency of the residents in a residential complex with 660 apartments in the new city of Andisheh, Shahriar.

Patients and Methods: In this study, 28 individuals were selected through the simple random sampling method using the Cochran’s formula. To collect data, a Connor-Davidson questionnaire was used. This semi-experimental study was a pretest and posttest with control group included. For data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics (Levine test, Covariance test) were used.

Results: Results of this study showed that training communicational skills was effective in resiliency of the residents of a residential complex under the study and raised their level of resiliency.

Conclusions: With regard to the results of the present study, communicational skills were effective on residents of the residential complex under the study and raised their resiliency. Training communicational skills has a close connection with daily life and aimed activities and can be useful for most people. It can be concluded that group training based on communicational skills may raise their degree of resiliency.

Keywords: Training Communicational Skills; Resiliency

1. Background

Maybe in 70s and 80s we would be proud of the apartments, since it was a symbol of urbanization and civilization. Without any knowledge of apartment life customs, we moved from houses to this new structure. With population growth in big cities like Tehran, the necessity of building smaller apartments and buildings with low area for lower prices began to circulate. The number of inhabitants of residential complexes began to rise. This interconnection leads to issues such as collectivity deficiency in maintenance equipment, undivided shares and etc. with rising costs of energy, new concerns emerge for residential complexes’ operators.

By the use of the housing production policy and small buildings in big city societies, conventional housing lost its meaning and through decreasing functions, more than anything it is reduced to shelter; residential complexes are expanding without providing any additional agents or activities. Human is abandoned and homeless, in city territories. This loss, will definitely lead to a fainted feeling of belonging and partnership ( 1 ).

The residents of residential complexes are also faced with some challenges such as adaptability, low tolerance and collectivity. Mistrust and lack of familiarity among members may lead to incompatibility in environment and a sort of neighbor abuse. Sadly, instead of discussing these issues and solving them, they tend to avoid each other and the gap between them will grow wider and wider. While compatibility will remove obstacles and difficulties, and eventually human gatherings will cause more environmental and social adaptability. We should strengthen apartment life culture and schools, local houses, culture houses and universities must be the point of departure (2).

Lack of communicational skills in a cohesive manner confuses both residents and operators of residential complexes. Being unfamiliar with skills such as solving problems, coping with unexpected incidents, bearing difficult conditions and so on, and living in such populated complexes will be an unpleasant experience and it seems factors like resiliency would make facing these challenges easier.

Resiliency is one of the factors which help people to confront living’s demands and threads; it is resiliency that has its unique place in developmental psychology, family and mental health; as the number of studies correlated to this structure is raising (3).

Resiliency is a personal trait, and people with such trait can functionally solve the challenges and stress between individuals. Davidson ( 3 ) defines resiliency as a talent and capacity to overcome the stress, incidents and disasters. In recent years, a positive psychology approach, focusing on human talents and capabilities, draw the attentions of researchers in different fields of psychology to itself.

Each person is born with a potential to grow and develop. Five stages of resiliency included: 1- The notion of personal competence, 2- Corresponds to trust in one’s instincts, tolerance of negative effects, 3- Positive acceptance of change, and secure relationships, 4- Control, and 5- Spiritual influence ( 5 ).

Expression of resiliency is defined in different cases as the capacity to adapt successfully with an environmental change. One of the signs of mental health is resiliency, which researchers define it as a result of mental health, functional capacity and social competence and find it a dynamic process that for positive resiliency, individuals would pose in confronting important threading situations; and more than indicating vulnerability toward stress, it emphasizes on the ability to recover from negative events ( 6 ).

Botvin ( 6 ) designed Life Skills Training (LST) program for the first time. In the World Health Organization view, people are trained by these life skills to raise their mental-social abilities and make them able to face life’s challenges in an effective manner. Communication needs to make connections and emotional attachments with others. People are spending a significant part of their life in connection with others or thinking about it, and the more successful and effective connections they have, the more successful they are. The skill of making effective connection is one of the most important features to predict health and between individual relations. A trait of communicational skills is their learning capability ( 8 ).

It appears that, if communicational skills were presented by educational institutes such as schools, universities and organizations, people’s resiliency in today’s complicated society which challenges them more every day, would be fruitful. The results of Ahmadi’s research ( 8 ) showed that communicational skills will improve social resiliency and educational progress. The results of Mozafari’s research ( 10 ) confirm the medium role of resiliency between attachment and mental health connection.

The results of study by Samani et al. ( 10 ), indicate that by reducing emotional problems (or raising mental health level), resiliency will lead to life contentment. The effect of resiliency variable on life contentment is indirect.

2. Objectives

Considering that the interconnection between residents in populated residential complexes may endanger resiliency and decrease this factor among them, it seems that communicational skills may increase their resiliency level. According to the available evident, this study aimed to assess the effectiveness of communicational skills in residents’ resiliency of a 660-apartment residential complex.

3. Patients and Methods

Research method was semi-experimental of a pretest-posttest design with a control group. The studied community in this research includes residents of a 660-apartment residential complex in the new city of Andisheh, Shahriar in 2014. First 200 individuals were chosen randomly and resiliency questionnaire was performed on them. People with resiliency lower than average, were specified and among them 28 individuals were chosen randomly. Then, samples were divided into two equal groups, one group was chosen by chance as the experimental group and the other as the control group. In this study, questionnaire normalization was done and the Connor and Davidson resiliency standard was used. Connor and Davidson reported Cronbach’s alpha ratio resiliency scale of 0.89 ( 4 ).

Members of the experimental group were trained in 10 sessions; each session was 120 minutes “training communicational skills according to World Health Organization program (2004)”, for two months starting April 21, 2014 till June 21, 2014; once a week in the sports hall of the complex. An independent variable was used for the experimental group (training communicational skills), but there was no training for the control group. After each course, both groups were examined again (protest).

3.1. Statistical Analysis

First, descriptive statistics were used and then the data were added into related tables and in the second phase statistical analysis was accomplished. To analyze this study’s hypothesis according to its nature, the analysis of covariance between the groups was used.

3.1.1. Data Description

As you can see, there was not much difference between resiliency scores of the experimental and control groups in the pretest phase ( Table 1 ). The total resiliency score for the experimental group in the pretest phase was 61.4 and for the control group was 60.57, which no significant difference was observed. There was a significant difference in the resiliency scores in the posttest phase between the two groups. Also, the total resiliency score of the subjects in the experimental group was increased to 70.1. This means on average, it has a total raise of 9 points.

Table 1. Resiliency’s Average and Standard Deviation Scores Divided by Groups of Experimental and Control in Pretest and Posttest Levels ^a

3.1.2. Data Analysis

To analyze study’s hypothesis according to its own nature, the analysis of covariance between the groups was used. However, first Levene’s test results on assumptions about homogeneity of variances must be reported.

4. Results

Table 2 shows that in research’s variable F, an increase less than 0.05 is not meaningful (P > 0.05), therefore the presumption of variances’ equality is confirmed. Meanwhile, considering other presumptions (assumption of homogenous and linear slopes) for data analysis, analysis of covariance between the groups can be used.

Table 2. Levene’s Test Results on Homogeneity of Variances of Case Study’s Scores

4.1. Assessing Study’s Hypothesis

Training communicational skills is effective on residents’ resiliency. Considering the results of Table 3 , and according to covariance analysis test’s results, the effect of communicational skills on residents’ resiliency is meaningful (P = 0.001 and F = 10.98). Hence, this difference is squared Eta equal to 0.573 and statistical power is equal to 0.973. Thus, these results indicated that communicational skills were effective on residents’ skills and raised their degree of resiliency and it was statistically meaningful (P < 0.05).

Table 3. Results of Covariance Analysis on Effects of Communicational Skills on Residents’ Resiliency

5. Discussion

The results showed that communicational skills were effective on residents’ resiliency of the residential complex under the study and raised their resiliency. Results of previous studies indicate that training communicational skills can raise the level of resiliency in individuals ( 12 – 14 ).

The results of the current study showed the positive effects of communicational skills on resiliency of the complex’s residents. Training communicational skills has a close connection with daily life and aimed activities and can be useful for most people. Resiliency includes a process of resistance and successful compatibility with threading and challenging conditions which not only leads to invincibility in individuals in emergent states, but also helps them to resist stressful situations with more mental and spiritual capacity. Since it appears that individuals with higher resiliency are more self-confident and have a higher self-esteem, they are calmer in critical situations and have a stronger sense of progress, and as a result they have a stronger sense of anticipation. In fact, resiliency is the process of capability or the outcome of a successful compatibility despite of challenging and threading conditions. Although it seems that resiliency is to some extent a personal feature and also a result of environmental experiences, people can also be trained to increase their resiliency capability by learning some skills. Thus, by applying different skills including communicational skills, in addition to increase their resiliency, their reaction in confronting stress, unpleasant events and difficulties can also be changed, to overcome their problems and negative effects. Therefore, some of the skills that help individuals to increase their resiliency can be taught, and since in every society issues like tolerance with neighbors and attention to their education and raising their level of resiliency in different subjects are important; by training them through counseling approaches and psychotherapy and equipping them with their inner resources, their capability toward compatible developing and even resisting unpleasant conditions and negative events is increased in society and one of the important psychotherapy approaches among them which can be effective in individuals’ resiliency is with no doubt communicational skills approach. According to the study’s results, it is recommended to: 1-Ministry of housing as the trustee of Mehr housing constructions can use communicational skills for its residents. Because of all interconnections in such structures as Mehr housing, it can be a precautionary act. 2-Inappropriate raise of apartment-life and residential complexes in recent years and the importance of group training such as communicational skills for residents, it is suggested that organizations like Municipalities’ Health Departments will be more than before a place for such trainings around the country and the counselors and psychologists in these departments have more responsibility than any other persons. 3-Large residential complexes’ CEO and members of board can talk about communicational skills training in their public meetings. 4-Medias including national television (Seda-va-Sima) can play an important role to promote resiliency’s approaches and improve the relationships between individuals in the society. It is suggested that authorities and social program directors produce training films.

Footnotes

Authors’ Contributions: Authors are contributed in the research equally.

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