Exploring emotional competencies and well-being in families: effects of a serious game program and a proposal for new measures
- Autores: María Priego Ojeda
- Directores de la Tesis: Núria Pérez Escoda (dir. tes.), Gemma Filella Guiu (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Lleida ( España ) en 2024
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Josefina Sala Roca (presid.), Ana Blasco Belled (secret.), Albert Alegre Rosselló (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Educación, Sociedad y Calidad de Vida por la Universidad de Lleida
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
This thesis provides a comprehensive exploration of how parents' emotional competencies impact family well-being, evaluating the effectiveness of various intervention tools, including video games, to enhance the emotional competencies of both children and parents. Additionally, it proposes new measures to assess emotional competencies and emotion regulation strategies. The thesis is divided into three sections, each composed of several scientific articles.
The first section focusses on exploring how emotion regulation links with family-related variables like parental stress and relationship satisfaction, and was composed by Study 1. This study examined differences between families of children with disabilities and normative families, focusing on how emotion dysregulation relates to relationship satisfaction through parental stress and interparental conflict, with supportive dyadic coping by oneself (SDCO) as a moderator. Families of children with disabilities experienced higher levels of parental stress and interparental conflict and lower relationship satisfaction compared to normative families. SDCO moderated the relationship between emotion dysregulation and parental stress in normative families, and between emotion dysregulation and relationship satisfaction in families of children with disabilities. In these families, higher SDCO amplified the indirect effects of emotion dysregulation on relationship satisfaction through parental stress.
The second section is composed by two studies that focus on evaluating two interventions to improve emotional competencies in both children and parents based on serious educational games (SEGs). Study 2 investigated the impact of parental involvement using the SEG Happy 8-12 at school with children and the SEG Happy for Families at home with the parents. The study revealed that children who played the game with their parents showed significant improvements in emotional regulation, emotional autonomy, and social competence, compared to those who played only at school. Additionally, parents reported enhanced emotional awareness and regulation. These findings emphasize the value of involving parents in interventions to maximize their effectiveness in fostering children's emotional development. Study 3 focuses on the video game Happy for Families, aimed at improving parents¿ emotional competencies within the family context. The study demonstrated that parents who played the game with their children experienced significant gains in emotional awareness, regulation, and the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. While no significant changes were observed in parental stress or life satisfaction, the results suggest that video games can be effective tools for nurturing emotional competencies in parents, especially when integrated into the family setting in interaction with the children.
Finally, the third section presents the proposal and validation of two measures to evaluate emotional competencies and emotion regulation strategies. This section consists of two studies. Study 4 addresses the need for validated instruments to assess emotional competencies in early primary education. The study introduces the Emotional Development on Early Primary Education Scale (EDEPES), a 28-item questionnaire that reliably measures emotional awareness, regulation, autonomy, and social competence in children aged 5 to 8 years. The EDEPES-28 demonstrated adequate reliability and validity, showing significant associations with anxiety and academic performance. The study also highlighted gender differences, with girls scoring higher on emotional competencies, particularly in the second grade. This results evidence that the EDEPES-28 is a valuable tool for teachers to assess and support children's emotional development in educational settings. Study 5 explores the complexity of behavioral and cognitive emotion regulation strategies and their links to psychopathology, through the adaptation and validation of the Behavioral Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (BERQ) in a Spanish context. The findings confirmed the factor structure and validity of both the full and short versions. In terms of associations with psychopathology, maladaptive strategies, particularly cognitive ones, exhibited stronger connections with symptoms and appeared more closely linked within the network. When analyzing bridge centrality, adaptive strategies like actively approaching and seeking distraction, along with maladaptive strategies such as self-blame and rumination, played a pivotal role in connecting various strategies and symptoms. Notably, rumination and seeking distraction were positively associated with both adaptive and maladaptive strategies, as well as with symptoms. The findings highlight the intricate interactions between different types of strategies and psychopathology, suggesting the need for therapeutic interventions that consider these complex dynamics.
Overall, this work provides significant insights into the connections between emotional competencies and family well-being, assessing the potential of innovative tools, such as SEGs, to enhance emotional competencies not only in school settings but also within families. Additionally, it proposes and validates new questionnaires to measure emotional competencies and emotion regulation.