The Effect of Expressive Writing Therapy to The Stress Level on Class IX Students Ahead of The National Exam

Abstract

Background: National examination is one of the government's efforts to improve the quality of education in Indonesia. There is students having stress when facing national examinations, so that appropriate action is needed to deal with the stress experienced by students. One of them is by providing cognitive expressive writing psychotherapy. Write down thoughts and deepest events about an unpleasant event effective in reducing stress levels.

Methods: Research method using Pre Experimental, type of One Group Pre-test Post-test Design with sample class IX students who will under national examinations that meets the inclusion and exclusion criteria using Purposive Sampling technique with sample of 39 respondents and the respondent that drop out as many as 1 respondent. Research instrument using Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA) by Jiandong Sun, et al in Indonesian Language.

Results: Expressive writing therapy is done in three sessions, each writing session is conducted for 15-20 minutes. The results of the majority of respondents experienced a change in the stress level previously in the very high category as many as 19 respondents (48.72%) to 8 respondents (20.51%). Based on the results of the Paired Sample T-Test obtained significance value 0.000 <α (0.05).

Conclusions: Expressive writing therapy can reduce the stress levels.