Friendship Management Training with Prosocial Orientation for Improving Social-Emotional Competence of Middle School Students

Background: Social-emotional competence have a high level of urgency to be actualized especially in middle school students because through this competency it is able to prevent the level of delinquency and crime and is able to improve academic achievement in students. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of friendship management training with prosocial orientation to improve the social-emotional competence of middle school students. Methods: This study used an experimental method with a pretest-posttest control group design. A total of 39 middle school students in Padang City, Indonesia, were selected by a randomization technique to be assigned to a control or experimental group after completing an informed consent. Social-emotional competence was measured using the Social and Emotional Competencies Evaluation Questionnaire (Coelho et al., 2015) developed by researchers. The scale had an Alpha Cronbach of 0.935, indicating high reliability. Results: Result showed that the ANOVA test results showed that friendship management training effectively improved the social-emotional competence of middle school students (F = 6.633; p < 0.05). The effect of treatment was proven to be significant, indicating an increase in the social-emotional competence of students who received prosocial-oriented friendship management training. The average increase in social-emotional competence of students with friendship management training was higher than that of the control group (F = 2,302; p > 0,05). Conclusions: According the results, friendship management training was found to be effective in increasing social-emotional competence of middle school students. Therefore, the training is recommended as a promising program to be implemented in schools to promote social-emotional competence of students.