Comparing the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy and attachment-based therapy on difficulty in emotion regulation, self-compassion, social adjustment, and perceived stress in aggressive adolescents

Comparing the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy and attachment-based therapy on difficulty in emotion regulation, self-compassion, social adjustment, and perceived stress in aggressive adolescents

A controlled clinical trial with parallel groups, double‑blind design, and purposive sampling method, with a sample size of 45 participants, who will be assigned through simple randomization into three groups of 15 individuals each.

The research will be conducted as a semi-experimental field study with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up design at the Psychological Services Center of Ahvaz. Participants will be randomly assigned to three groups. The assessment will be conducted in the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up stages and in a double-blind manner (clinical caregivers, outcome assessor, and data analyst).

Inclusion Criteria: Be at least 9 and at most 12 years old Have symptoms of aggression Achieving an above-average score on the aggression questionnaire Exclusion criteria: Having a physical problem that interferes with the research process Having mental disorders History of taking psychiatric medications

Intervention Group 1: Emotion-focused therapy based on Greenberg's Emotion-focused Approach protocol (2002; quoted from Golestan, 1404) will be implemented in the form of 8 60-minute weekly training sessions for experimental group 1. Intervention Group 2: Attachment-based therapy, derived from Bowlby's attachment theory (1969) and developed by Nezamdoost et al. (1404), will be implemented in the form of 12 60-minute weekly sessions for experimental group 2. Control Group: They will not receive any intervention.

Difficulty in emotion regulation; Self‑compassion; Social adjustment; Perceived stress

In this study, in order to achieve completely random allocation of participants to groups and to reduce any potential researcher bias, the simple randomization method will be used. First, a complete list of male adolescents with aggressive behavior in secondary schools of Ahvaz who meet the study inclusion criteria will be prepared. After the initial screening and confirmation of the inclusion criteria, a numerical identification code will be assigned to each participant. In the next step, these codes will be entered into a Random Number Generator software so that a unique random number will be generated for each participant. Then, the participants will be arranged in ascending order based on the generated random numbers. After sorting, the individuals will be sequentially assigned to three research groups; such that the first to fifteenth individuals on the list will be placed in the first experimental group (Emotion-Focused Therapy), the sixteenth to thirtieth individuals in the second experimental group (Attachment-Based Therapy), and the thirty-first to forty-fifth individuals in the control group. This allocation procedure will be designed in such a way that the order of participants’ entry into the study or the researcher’s familiarity with them will have no role in the allocation process, and it will not be possible to predict the group assignment of any participant before the completion of the randomization process.

In this study, in order to reduce bias, blinding will be performed at the level of clinical caregivers, outcome assessor, and data analyst. The list of participants’ allocation to the study groups will be available only to the researcher responsible for allocation or to a person who will not be directly involved in the process of assessment and data analysis. Therefore, the clinical caregivers who will provide the usual services and care to the participants will remain unaware of their allocation to the study groups. In addition, the assessment of outcomes will be carried out by a person who will not participate in the group allocation process and will not have access to the allocation list. This assessor will collect and record the data related to the variables under study, including aggression, difficulties in emotion regulation, self-compassion, and social adjustment, solely on the basis of the participants’ identification codes, in such a way that he/she will not be aware of each participant’s assignment to the emotion-focused therapy group, the attachment-based therapy group, or the control group. Furthermore, the data will be coded before entering the statistical analysis stage, and the groups will be identified using neutral labels such as A, B, and C. The statistical analyst will receive the data in the form of these codes and will remain unaware, until the completion of the statistical analysis, of the actual assignment of the codes to the emotion-focused therapy group, the attachment-based therapy group, and the control group. The unblinding of the groups will be carried out only after the completion of the initial data analysis.