The Impact of Online Training in Positive Thinking Skills on Social Adjustment and Alexithymia in Trans-sexual Students

Background: alexithymia and social adjustment are among the problems to which trans-sexual students are encountered. teaching positive thinking skills has been considered as a therapeutic technique for social adjustment and behavioral issues in children and adolescents. therefore, this study was aimed to determine whether online teaching of positive thinking skills would contribute to improve social adjustment and alexithymia in trans-sexual students. methods: the present study was semi-experimental in terms of research methods, and an applied one in terms of the research objective. it was performed as a pre-test, post-test study on two experimental and control groups from may to july 2021. the research population consisted of all trans-sexual secondary high school students who referred to counseling offices in schools and educational departments in tehran. out of the research overall population, a total of 60 students were selected as the research sample. they were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups, each with 30 students. the former received teaching in positivity as an intervention through online teaching, whereas the latter received no intervention. the data collection tools for this study were sinha & singh’s adjustment inventory for school students (aiss) (1993), toronto alexithymia scale (tas-20) (1994), and positive thinking skills framework by seligman, steen, park, and peterson (2005). statistical analysis was performed using spss software, version 23. a p value less than 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. results: the mean±sd in the pre- and post-test in the control group for adjustment were 11.30±4.11 and 11.76±3.28, respectively, and those of the experiment group for social adjustment were 11.94±3.03, and 14.49±3.61, respectively. the mean±sd in the pre- and post-test in the control group for alexithymia were 16.50±2.90, 16.10±5.61, and those of the experiment group for alexithymia were 16.20±3.71, 20.60±2.42. the results showed that teaching positive thinking skill was effective in social adjustment in trans-sexual students (p=0.002). teaching positive thinking skills was also found to have a significant effect on alexithymia in students (p=0.007). the mean±sd for the two variables of social adjustment and alexithymia were equal to 3.236±0.700 and 3.296±0.723, respectively. conclusion: online teaching of positive thinking skills was shown to make a great contribution to trans-sexual students’ social adjustment and alexithymia