Can “Parachute Game” Improve the Emotional Intelligence of Deaf
Students?
Linggi Andiri
1
, Frengky Yudis Prasetyo
2
, and Ganjar Garniadi
2
1
Physical Education, Health and Recreation Studies Program, Department of Sport Education,
College of Teacher Training and Education Pasundan, Jln Permana No 32B, Cimahi Utara Kota Cimahi, Indonesia
2
Sport Education Program, Postgraduate School, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jln. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229 Bandung,
Indonesia
Keywords: Parachute Games, Emotional Intelligence, Deaf.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to obtain a picture on the development of emotional intelligence level of
children with hearing impairment through the approach of playing using a parachute. The used method was
experimental method with Pretest-Posttest Design. The samples of this research were all students’ deaf in
SLB Negeri Citeureup Kota Cimahi. Data were obtained from the results of pretest and posttest
measurements using emotional intelligence questionnaire that has passed legibility tested by deaf students
and has also passed the tests for validity and reliability. The obtained data were processed using T-Paired
test. The results showed that the parachute game gave a positive effect on the improvement of emotional
intelligence for deaf students, with the correlation value of 0.892. Differences obtained from pretest and
posttes on emotional intelligence indicator show sig value of 0.026 for empathy (significant), sig value
of 0.004 for Relationship (significant), sig value of 0.143 for self-motivation (not signifikasn), and sig
value of 0.594 for understanding emotions (not significant). In general, the parachute game contributes
significantly to the improvement of deaf students' emotional intelligence.
1 INTRODUCTION
Emotional intelligence is important to be possessed
by every individual, be it in the field of education,
organization, or other (Alexander, 2015). Emotional
intelligence has an equally important or more
important influence on individual success in life than
intellectual intelligence. According to Goleman,
emotional intelligence can contribute to several
aspects of life, such as increased education,
decreased aggressive behavior, better decision-
making and others, that help success in life. Mayer
and Salovey (1997) explain that emotional
intelligence "as the ability to generate emotions, to
access emotions and emotional knowledge, and to
reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote
emotional and intellectual growth. Emotional
intelligence has been proven in predicting successful
relations in workplace and in private life (Campos,
2004). The skills to control and use emotion
intelligently actually play an important role in
ensuring the well-being of a person, including the
deaf people.
Initially, the impact of deafness seems simple,
they will only have hearing loss that can be
diagnosed from medical procedures. However, there
are actually greater impacts of social and emotional
problems, even worse than hearing loss (Fraenkel,
2012; Glickman, 2007). Research conducted by
Sinnot & Jones (2005) shows high emotional
disturbance and behavioral abnormalities in students
with hearing impairment. Deaf people have
difficulties in expressing feelings, what they like or
dislike (Greenberg, 1993). They tend to close
themselves and are unable to express what they feel.
Suarez's (2000) study shows that children with
hearing impairment are less able to empathize, to
have social perception, have social problem solving,
and other social aspects, as well as lower academic
achievement than their peers. For children with
hearing problems, characteristics and emotions
during the early stages of development are no
different from children with no hearing loss, but as
they grow older they will have a relatively limited
understanding of the emotional process (Terwogt,
2004). During primary school, their emotional
92
Andiri, L., Prasetyo, F. and Garniadi, G.
Can “Parachute Game” Improve the Emotional Intelligence of Deaf Students?.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sports Science, Health and Physical Education (ICSSHPE 2017) - Volume 1, pages 92-96
ISBN: 978-989-758-317-9
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

development is no different from other children but
when in high school, children with hearing loss will
lack from other children in the development of
emotions. The emotional characteristics of deaf
people according to Marschark (1997) are as
follows: show a high degree of egocentrism,
misunderstand others’ behaviors so they become
aggressive, ignore others' feelings, suffer from
emotional stability, negative and lack of desire and
interest in life, doubting others and not trusting the
people who can hear, more depressed.
Since deaf students are included as people with
special needs, they need certain care to improve and
develop their emotional intelligence. Emotional
intelligence can be enhanced by social skills
training. Emotional development is influenced by
changes that occur in other areas, such as motor or
language and cognitive, as well as a source of
influence, for example, social development
(Hindley, 2000). According to Stewart & David
Alan (2005), "for many deaf adults, participation in
deaf sport events is a major means of socialization.
Deaf sport provides a place for meaningful
interactions with others ... ". Sport activities through
this game is one means for children with impaired
hearing to socialize with others. The game to be
used in this research is the parachute game.
"Parachute games are an exciting way to develop
cooperative skills, self-confidence, empathy,
communication skills and emotional literacy. In
addition, they are incredible fun" (Kirk, 2003).
Games using parachutes are an interesting way to
develop skills of cooperation, confidence, empathy,
communication skills and emotional skills. In
addition, the game uses a wonderfully fun parachute.
This research is aimed to answer some questions:
1) how much is the contribution of parachute game,
separately, to empathy, relation to others, self-
motivation, and understanding of emotions for deaf
students, 2) how much is parachute game‘s
contribution in improving deaf students' emotional
intelligence generally?
2 METHODS
2.1 Participants
The sample in this study was saturated sampling, i.e.
students in SLB Negeri Citeureup Cimahi City,
amounted to 24 people.
2.2 Procedures
The used research method was experimental method
with pretest-posttest experimental design. The study
was conducted from September 17, 2014 to October
27, 2014. The study began with a pretest and ended
with a posttest. The study was conducted 16 times
with three meetings per one week pace, using
different parachute game materials, adopted from
Making Wapes: Exciting Parachute Games To
Develop Self Confidence And Team-Building Skills
as well as added some form of parachute game
variations that fit the theme at the meetings.
Treatment with parachute game was done from
08.00 until 09.30 on every meeting. The
implementation of the exercise program is as
presented in the table below:
Table 1: Research Implementation Program.
Meeting
Parachute Game
Materials
Time
-
Implementation of pre test
Wednesday,
September 17,
2014
1
- Excitaball (Interesting
Ball)
Friday, September
19, 2014
2
- Side to Side (Side to
Side)
Monday,
September 22,
2014
3
- Jumping Bean
(Jumping Bean)
Wednesday,
September 24,
2014
4
- High Ball (High Ball)
Friday, September
26, 2014
5
- Snap and Catch
(Happiness and Capture)
Monday,
September 29,
2014
6
- Pass The Parachute
Along
Wednesday,
October 1, 2014
7
- Shaking all over
Friday, October 3,
2014
8
- Bucket Ball (Bucket
Ball)
Monday, October
6, 2014
9
- The Tortoise (Turtles)
Wednesday,
October 8, 2014
10
- Presents (Prizes)
Friday, October
10, 2014
11
- Spring Cleaning
(Spring house cleaner)
Monday, October
13, 2014
12
- Beat The Count
(Counts)
Wednesday,
October 15, 2014
13
- Fly The Kite (Fly
Kites)
Friday, October
17, 2014
14
- Out in The Boat (On
the boat)
Monday, October
20, 2014
15
- Shake a Score (Shake
the score)
Wednesday,
October 22, 2014
Can “Parachute Game” Improve the Emotional Intelligence of Deaf Students?
93

16
- On an Off (flame and
Off)
Friday, October
24, 2014
-
Implementation of Post
test
Monday, October
27, 2014
2.3 Instrument
The used instrument was a questionnaire about
emotional intelligence which was prepared based on
indicators. Before the questionnaire was
disseminated, there was legibility test for the
questionnaire since the vocabularies of deaf children
were still very limited, so there must be a legibility
test. Later, the questionnaire was tested to see the
validity and reliability of the questionnaire.
Processing was done by using the statistic of Paired
Sample Test.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the results of research that has been done,
obtained data were as follows:
Table 2: Paired Samples Correlations.
N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
Pre-test of
Emotional
Intelligence
& Post-test
of
Emotional
Intelligence
24
.892
.000
Table 2 describes the relations between variables
and the following test criteria:
 If the significance value is > 0.05, then there
is no relation between the parachute games
with increased emotional intelligence.
 If the significance value is < 0.05, then there
is relation between the parachute games with
increased emotional intelligence
The table above shows a significance value of
0.000 with a significance level of 0.05 which means
that the value of significance (0,000) was <0.05.
This means that there is a relationship between the
parachute games with the increase in the emotional
intelligence of the deaf students.
Table 3: Paired Samples Test.
Paired Differences
t
df
Sig. (2-
tailed)
Mean
Std.
Deviation
Std. Error
Mean
95% Confidence
Interval of the
Difference
Lower
Upper
Pair 1
Pre-test of Emotional
Intelligence & Post-test of
Emotional Intelligence
-5.042
8.111
1.656
-8.466
-1.617
-3.045
23
.006
The hypothesises are:
H0: There is no significant difference in the
emotional intelligence level before and after
treatment with parachute game.
H1: There is a significant difference in the
emotional intelligence level before and after
treatment with the parachute game.
Table 3 shows that the t arithmetic value is -
3.045 with sig of 0.006. Because sig is <0.05, it can
be concluded that Ho is rejected, which means that
for the average of emotional intelligence before and
after parachute game, there is an increase, with the
difference of -5,042. Therefore, it can be stated that
the parachute game in general can affect the
improvement of emotional intelligence of students
with impaired hearing.
Table 4: Paired Samples Test.
Paired Differences
t
df
Sig. (2-
tailed)
Mean
Std.
Deviation
Std. Error
Mean
95% Confidence Interval
of the Difference
Lower
Upper
Pair 1
Pretest of
Empathy –
Posttest of
Empathy
-1.583
3.269
.667
2.964
-.203
2.373
23
.026
ICSSHPE 2017 - 2nd International Conference on Sports Science, Health and Physical Education
94

Pair 2
Pretest of
Relationship-
Posttest of
Relationship
-2.625
3.954
.807
-4.295
-.955
3.252
23
.004
Pair 3
Pretest of Self-
motivating
Posttest of Self-
motivating
-.625
2.018
.412
-1.477
.227
1.518
23
.143
Pair 4
Pretest of
understanding
emotions -
Posttest of
understanding
emotions
-.208
1.888
.385
-1.005
.589
-.541
23
.594
However, when seen on per-indicator of
emotional intelligence, not all students experienced a
significant increase after parachute game. Table 3.3.
shows the influence of parachute game on the
indicators of emotional intelligence.
•For empathy indicator, a significance value of
0.026 < 0.05 means that the parachute game has a
significant effect. This result supports Mosley, J. &
Sonnet, H. "Parachute games are an exciting way to
develop cooperation skills, self-confidence,
empathy, communication skills and emotional
literacy. In addition, they are incredibble fun ".
Characteristics of parachute game that allow
participants to swap positions, exchange roles are
expected to help a person understanding the same
situation from other person's point of view. It can
also contribute to the development of empathy.
For indicators relating to others, the significance
value of 0.004 <0.05 means that the parachute game
has a significant effect. This result supports the
research conducted by Akhmad Olih Solihin (2015)
on the influence of parachute games on improving
cooperation. The result shows deaf students'
cooperation is increasing [18]. The parachute game
is a group game performed by at least two people.
The characteristic is that each person works together
to complete a movement mission or certain mission.
With such characteristic, it would certainly help
improving emotional intelligence of deaf students in
aspects related to others.
• For self-motivating indicators, the significance
value of 0.143 > 0.05 means that the parachute game
has no significant effect. In the self-motivating
aspect, deaf students, by measuring their ability to
solve problems, learn from their mistakes, and make
decisions and the like. With regard to it, it is difficult
for deaf students to be able to motivate themselves,
even though they have been given the parachute
games treatment.
• For indicators of understanding emotions, the
value of significance is 0.594 > 0.05. This means
that the parachute game has no significant effect. As
Cambra (2005) explains, it is difficult for deaf
people to express what they feel like or dislike.
Figure 1: Results of Calculation on the Average of
Emotional Intelligence Indicators.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Based on the results of this study, it can be
concluded that the training using parachute games is
an important component in providing the
intervention of students with special needs, people
with impaired hearing. Parachute games can be used
to improve emotional intelligence on several aspects,
such as empathy and relationships with others, as for
the self-motivating aspect and self-understanding
aspects, parachute games have no significant impact.
However, in general, parachute games can improve
deaf students' emotional intelligence. To be able to
generalize the results, the research must be done
with larger-sized samples. Further research is also
needed to develop parachute games in improving
emotional intelligence for children with other special
needs.
Can “Parachute Game” Improve the Emotional Intelligence of Deaf Students?
95

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