The Impact of Program Improvement Using Forest Healing Resources on the Therapeutic Effect: Focused on Improving Index of Greenness for Adolescents

This study is to examine the effect of improving the forest therapy program for adolescents using forest healing resources (focused on improving index of greenness for adolescents). The participants were 30 students from in the control group that participated in the 2018 program, and 51 students in experimental group that participated in the improved program in 2019. The questionnaire, developed by Korea Forest Welfare Institute, was comprised of items on general matters, index of greenness, restorative environment, positive emotion, negative emotion, facial expression and psychological assessment. The control group had 30 and the experimental group had 49 valid copies of the questionnaires. As a result of the paired sample t-test for each group, the control group showed a significant increase in all categories except restorative environment. In the experimental group, all categories significantly improved to a higher level (p <.01). An independent sample t-test (one-tailed test) was performed to test the effect of the forest therapy program with improved index of greenness. As a result, the index of greenness increased by 0.73 points(t=2.555, p <.01) and restorative environment by 1.01 points (t=2.567, p <.01), showing statistical significance. Negative emotion increased by 0.04 points (t=0.183, p >.05), which was not significant. On the other hand, positive emotion decreased by 0.42 points (t=-1.918, p <.05), facial expression by 0.57 points (t=-1.775, p <.05), and psychological assessment by 0.29 points (t=-0.981, p >.05), showing significance in positive emotion and facial expression. However, all the decreased items showed significant improvements between the pretest and posttest scores of the experimental group.