Calls for a more prescriptive, individually tailored approach to counselor training have recently appeared in the literature. The focus of this study was the assessment of behavior and personality characteristics of master's level counseling students and to determine if change occurred among these characteristics as a result of counselor training and supervision or to the gender of the student.;Behavior was assessed using the Hutchins Behavior Inventory which measures the thinking, feeling and acting domains of behavior. Personality characteristics were measured using the Adjective Checklist and the California Personality Inventory. Data from eighty-five students were used.;Discriminant analysis was used to determine if personality characteristics discriminated the behavior groups. Additionally, repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance and the univariate analysis of variance component of the discriminant analyses were used to determine if change occurred.;Students differed across the behavior groups. Further, selected personality variables discriminated the behavior groups. When the discriminant function was used 85.88% of the students were classified correctly. Additionally, change was observed across training and supervision. The gender of the student was not significant in this analysis. The interventions of counselor training and supervision appeared to cause the change.

The purpose of this phenomenological investigation was to explore the counseling internship experience and gain knowledge of the variables that counselor interns perceived impacted their psychological growth. The interns who volunteered for the study were participating in a counseling internship to complete their requirements for a master's degree from a CACREP accredited institution. This qualitative study was chronicled for phenomenological analysis by conducting four interviews with each intern during their counseling internship. Further items for data analysis included a record of observations made by the researcher's attendance of their weekly internship class, analysis of videotaped counseling sessions presented in the internship class by use of the Flanders Interactional Analysis for Counseling and written essays of internship goals produced by the interns at the beginning of the internship experience. Cognitive developmental theory was used as a framework for discussion of how knowledge was assimilated and accommodated as interns faced the challenges of counseling clients independently for the first time. Internship sites included substance abuse and family therapy clinics. This phenomenological analysis found the following issues critical to the interns' psychological development: age of the intern, type of clientele at the internship site, supervision, need for sense of personal power (defined as self-reliance, viewing oneself as capable of producing knowledge, and insight into one's own life experiences) to overcome their desire to be authority figure in counseling relationships, and the process of learning case conceptualizations especially with reference to the interns' conceptualization of client-counselor relationships.

Families come to therapy wanting to know how to raise good citizens and address issues of justice and fairness in the context of their interpersonal relationships. Research literature suggests that the family may be the best context for moral learning. The implications of deliberately promoted developmental growth within the context of a family therapy intervention are explored. Specifically, the relationships between moral reasoning, ego development and relational functioning in family therapy are examined within a systems-based therapeutic approach.;Outcome research in family therapy suggests that there is at least a moderate positive effect of family therapy. This study examines the effects of a deliberate psychological education (DPE) intervention in the context of systemic family therapy. This study proposed that those at higher levels of moral reasoning and ego development would exhibit a greater ability to adapt to normative family life cycle transitions and exhibit greater relational functioning as more cognitively complex parents may be better equipped to facilitate family organization, communication and emotional responsiveness.;Results of this study indicated developmental shifts in both the treatment and comparison groups over time, with significant positive gains indicated for the treatment group in the domains of ego development and moral reasoning. Family functioning improved slightly for the treatment group over time, but effects were not significant. Implications of this study and suggestions for future research are suggested.

This study investigated whether therapists' health of family of origin, marital adjustment, and personality traits influence their approach to therapy in systematic and measurable ways. Approach to therapy referred to: (1) relative emphasis on clients' family of origin versus current presenting problems, and (2) preference for doing individual versus conjoint marital therapy.;This study employed a survey design. Questionnaires were mailed to a national random sample of 200 counselors from the membership of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC). One hundred-six were returned, for a return rate of 53%. The following instruments were used to measure the variables in the study: the Family of Origin Scale; the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test; The Adjective Check List; and the Therapeutic Focus Scale, an instrument created by the author for this study.;The results were not statistically significant for any of the hypotheses in the study. However, the relationship between therapists' family of origin and approach to therapy approached significance. That is, there was a trend for therapists from healthier families of origin to focus more on clients' current presenting problems, and for therapists from less healthy families of origin to focus more on clients' families of origin. An unexpected finding was that therapists who held a doctoral degree were relatively more likely to focus on clients' current presenting problems, whereas holders of masters degrees were more likely to focus on clients' families of origin. The overarching conclusion of this study, however, is that the influence of therapists' family background and personality traits on their therapeutic approach appears to be too complex and subtle to be easily categorized and measured.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of an Banduraian-based group social skills training in the prevention of stress, depression, and social anxiety of Taiwanese graduate students in the U.S.;The subjects of this study were 60 Taiwanese students recruited at four seminars sponsored by the Taiwan Ministry of Education, which aimed to prepare students for future overseas study. Thirty subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental condition and were trained with social skills before they left for U.S. The other thirty subjects were assigned to the control group without any treatment.;It was hypothesized that: (1) There would be a significant difference at the.05 level in subjects receiving pre-arrival social skills training as contrast with subjects receiving no treatment in their level of stress, depression, and social anxiety at the posttest (1 week after treatment); (2) There would be a significant difference at the.05 level in subjects receiving pre-arrival social skills training as contrast with subjects receiving no treatment in their level of stress, depression, and social anxiety at the follow-up (1 to 2 month after subjects' arrival in U.S.).;The results indicated that participation in an Banduraian-based group skills training course for Taiwanese graduate students did not have short term effects on their perceived stress, depression, and social anxiety. However, results demonstrated a general trend toward more positive outcomes. Although there was also no evidence for the effectiveness of social skills training in the prevention of future perceived depression and social anxiety, the analysis of followup data revealed that the effects of social skills training on prevention of perceived stress for Taiwanese graduate students was supported.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible correlation between codependency and career choice. A review of the literature seems to indicate that the helping professions attract people who are "prone" to codependency. For this reason, this study focused on four groups of undergraduate students: nursing students, psychology students, and social work majors, as the "helping profession" students, and students majoring in business-related fields. The study was also designed to provide empirical evidence to conplement the descriptive studies which have been the main source of information available up to the present time.;Subjects were drawn from students attending Christopher Newport College and Riverside Regional Medical Center's School of Professional Nursing. Each group consisted of 40 students.;Subjects were asked to complete three self-report inventories: The Moos Family Environment Scale (FES), The Adjective Check List (ACL), (Real and Ideal), and The Behavioral Assessment Inventory, which was actually the Friel Codependency Assessment Inventory (FCDI) combined with the L and K scales of the MMPI.;It was hypothesized that: Students in helping professions will score higher on the Behavioral Assessment Inventory than business students; Students in helping professions will show a larger discrepancy between Real and Ideal Self on the ACL and will also score higher on the Nurturance and Abasement scales of the ACL than business students; and students in the helping professions will score higher on the Conflict and Control scales of the FES than business students.;None of the results were significant at the 0.05 level. However, an artifact of the research indicates there is a significant difference on the K scale (incorporated in the FCDI) (t = 2.79, p {dollar}<{dollar}.05) between helping profession and business students.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of two group counseling approaches upon adult substance abuser's unresolved grief reactions in an inpatient hospital setting. Forty-one adult patients hospitalized in an inpatient substance abuse treatment program were subjects in the study. All subjects were volunteers and assigned to either a higher level inpatient therapy group (Yalom model), structured didactic group, or control group. Pre and posttesting was accomplished by use of the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief, Beck Depression Inventory, and Adjective Check List. It was hypothesized that by virtue of a grief counseling group there would be a significant improvement in unresolved grief as measured by (1) the Present Feeling scale of the TRIG, (2) a decrease in depression as measured by the BDI and (3) significant improvement in intraception, succorance, and personal adjustment as measured by the ACL.;Treatment interventions were administered to the two experimental groups and withheld from the control group. The two treatment groups met for three sessions each week for 75 minutes per group session. Groups were open-ended and ongoing and subjects participated in their assigned group until each had participated in eight counseling sessions. The control group did not meet.;The research design utilized in this study was the Pretest-Posttest Control Group Experimental Design. The statistical procedure analysis of covariance was employed to determine the efficacy of the two different group treatment approaches. Five null hypotheses provided the basis for testing whether or not there were significant differences (mean =.05) between the three groups on posttest measures of grief resolution, depression, intraception, succorance, and personal adjustment.;Analysis of the test data revealed no significant differences between the two treatment groups and control group with respect to grief resolution and no significant differences in improvement of depression between the two treatment groups and control group. There was significant improvement demonstrated between the two treatment groups and control group relative to intraception, however the increase was not significantly greater for either of the treatment interventions. Also, there was a significant improvement demonstrated in succorance for the higher level inpatient therapy group; the control group demonstrated a trend of increased succorance and the structured didactic group showed indications of decreased succorance. Lastly, there was significant improvement between the two treatment groups as compared to the control group in relation to personal adjustment.

This study attempted to develop and evaluate the content, format and effectiveness of a parent training course which emphasized democratic child rearing methods. The course was conducted by a school counselor in an elementary school. The content was a combination of Dreikur's child-raising techniques and Gordon's communication skills embodied into a commercial program called Systematic Training for Effective Parenting. The format for each of the nine suggested group sessions began with a leader-introduced topic, followed by large and small group discussions, simulated role play, use of worksheets, handouts, audio-visuals, and homework assignments. Objective evidence of program effectiveness was determined by using the F Scale to measure participants' response to the training. The research design utilized two control groups and one experimental group. Ten null hypotheses were designed to test attitudinal changes on the differences between pretest and posttest means, trend differences between experimental and control groups, and significance of posttest means after correction for pretest effects. The findings were somewhat inconsistent. Attitudes for parents in the experimental group did change in the desired direction. This change registered .07 on the Attitudes Toward the Freedom of Children scale and .17 for the F Scale, approaching the established .05 level of confidence. On both scales, the experimental group showed a decrease in scores, while the control groups showed an increase. This decrease was interpreted to mean less need for authority and control of children, while an increase denoted greater need. These tendencies were analyzed statistically and proved significant for the F Scale but not for the Attitudes Toward the Freedom of Children scale. Parents' subjective responses concerning the training were very favorable. Concluding recommendations suggested several benefits gained from attending a parent training course for democratic child rearing practices. Parents did show less need for authority and control over children and they did report positive feelings about their participation. The need for additional research in parent education was noted, and it was further suggested that parent training in the school setting be continued. The enthusiastic parent participation in this particular group suggested a possibility for improved home-school relations.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of parents' perceptions of their role in helping their children acculturate to a new cultural and social environment. Specifically, this study used qualitative methods to interview Black families who moved from large urban communities to a smaller Midwestern college town. The sample consisted of ten Black parents who had moved to this college town from a United States (U.S) urban community with a population size of at least 100,000 persons. The results indicated that parents perceived their role in helping their children adapt to this new environment as important. However, they all described their role differently. Furthermore, the results suggested that all parents in the study moved out of their home towns to escape violence and crime and to pursue an overall better quality of life for themselves and their families. Data gathered from this study will assist administrators, teachers, school counselors, community leaders and parents to better understand geographic mobility and ways to successfully assist with such transitions.