The Effectiveness of Sandplay Therapy to Improve Students’ Self-Esteem: A Preliminary Study in Brunei Darul Salam

Purpose- This research was conducted to identify the effectiveness of sandplay therapy to improve students’ self-esteem among students. Methods- The sample was 16 students for experimental group, who received sandplay therapy, in comparison to the 16 students from control group who did not receive any treatment intervention. The instrument used in this research was Self-Esteem Inventory developed by Coopersmith. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22 using Manova Repeated Measure Method, pre-test and post-test instruments. Results- The results from multivariate Pillai’s Trace test shows the main effect of the sandplay therapy from the post-test is significant F (5, 11) = 41.372, p<.05. The univariate shows that there is significant difference of the sandplay therapy to the general self-esteem F (1, 15) = 49.853 α<.05, social self-esteem F (1, 15) = 63.646 α<.05, parental self-esteem F (1, 15) = 82.924 α<.05 and academic self-esteem F (1, 15) = 80.071 α<.05. Conclusions- Sandplay therapy can be used in school to help students improve their self-esteem. Given this, one of the issues relating to adolescents is low self-esteem. Therefore, by applying sandplay therapy can minimize the issue surrounding low self-esteem among adolescents particularly in Brunei Darussalam However, since limited study on the usage of this kind of therapy, it is suggested that further study on the applicability of this therapy should be conducted.