PILOT IMPLEMENTATION OF A MULTICOMPONENT INTERVENTION PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN IN THE RISK GROUP IN TERMS OF SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN PRESCHOOL PERIOD

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a multicomponent intervention program for children who are in the risk group in terms of social-emotional development in preschool period on children's social-emotional development, behavioral problems and well-being, and parents' competence, parenting relationships and parental stress levels. In line with this purpose, the research has a mixed design feature as it includes quantitative and qualitative dimensions. The qualitative part was conducted with a phenomenological design to evaluate the participants' perceptions of the program, while the quantitative part was designed with a pretest-posttest and control group experimental design. Necessary ethical permissions were obtained for the research. The following scales were administered to the participants according to the criteria for assignment to the groups, primarily voluntariness: Social Skills Assessment Scale, Preschool Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ), Social Emotional Well-Being and Psychological Resilience Scale for Preschool Children (PERIK), Perceived Parental Self-Efficacy Scale (PPSE), Parent Stress Scale (PSS), Parenting Relationship Questionnaire (BASC-3) and personal information form. In the statistical analysis of the data, qualitative data were analyzed using MaxQDA-2018 qualitative data analysis program and quantitative data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 22 package program. Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test and Mann Whitney U test were used in qualitative data. In the experimental group, a significant (p<0.05) difference was found in social-emotional development, behavioral problems and parenting relationships and parental stress levels compared to the control group. However, although the well-being levels of the child participants increased, they did not reach the level of significance, while there was no significant difference in parental competence levels (p>0.05). It can be concluded that the multicomponent intervention program for children in the risk group in terms of social-emotional development in preschool period is effective in the social-emotional development of children. Comprehensive experimental studies on this subject are needed.