Efficacy of group counselling on multicultural awareness and respect among Thai Buddhist and Thai Muslim students

Abstract

This study examined the efficacy of structured, psychoeducational group counselling on multicultural awareness and respecting diversity among Buddhist and Muslim students in Thailand. Elements of intimacy sharing, self-awareness, ethnic identity, self-esteem, complex cognition, empathic understanding and cooperation were structured in group sessions. The design was a controlled trial with 39 participants (22 Thai-Buddhists; 17 Thai-Muslims). The control group also attended 16 group sessions. Diversity respect and cultural awareness were measured by author-developed scales with 0.70 and 0.80 reliabilities. One-way multivariate of variance (MANOVA) and covariance (MANCOVA) were used for data analysis. Results supported the hypothesis. Results are discussed and limitations are noted.

Keywords:

• group counselling
• multicultural awareness
• diversity respect
• Buddhist–Muslim
• Thai students

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by grants from The Institute of Research and Development for Health of Southern, Thailand (No. RDG 4980803). We wish to thank Mitch Ratanasen for editing the earlier draft of this paper.