CCPJ - Volume 1, Issue 3

ABSTRACT - The current study examines the manner in which adult attachment styles are related to anxiety, worry, and depression levels. Participants included 1040 individuals who completed the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS), The State Trait Anxiety Inventory, The Penn State Worry Questionnaire, and The Beck Depression Inventory. The AAS measures were also mapped onto the Multi-Item Measure of Adult Romantic Attachment. The results support the hypotheses that attachment models are related to self-reported levels of anxiety, worry, and depression with some exceptions. All of the AAS measures of attachment were indicative of anxiety and worry, but comfort with closeness was not a predictor of depression levels. The four attachment styles—secure, dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful—were related to anxiety, worry and depression levels. However, preoccupied and fearfully attached participants did not differ from each other for any measure, and secure and dismissing types did not differ in experiences of worry or depression. Overall, our results give further support to the idea that the negative affect, such as anxiety, reflected in attachment models shares a common nexus with that experienced in psychopathology especially in terms of anxiety, worry and depression.

Barron’s Revised Ego-Strength Scale as a Measure of Test Taking Style: Relationships with the Validity Scales of the MMPI-2

Steven Thurber, Eugene Bonynge, & Charles R. Honts

(pp. 119-124)

ABSTRACT - Relationships between the Barron revised Ego-Strength (Es) Scale and selected validity scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Invertory-2 (MMPI-2) were examined in terms of zero-order correlations, multiple partial correlations, factor analysis, and discriminant analysis. The participants were 259 individuals from a state correctional system. The fundamental aim was to ascertain whether or not low scores on the Es represent a hypothesized test taking style related to faking bad. The data yielded support for this notion and also suggested that higher Es scores may relate to social desirability or fake good responding.

Counseling Psychology in the New Millennium: Predictions and Realities

John S. Westefeld, Elizabeth M. Altmaier, Theodore Pickett, Jr., & Charlotte Sikes

(pp. 125-140)

ABSTRACT - In 1980, The Counseling Psychologist published an issue containing 18 articles written by prominent counseling psychologists of the time regarding their predictions for counseling psychology in the year 2000. These articles are revisited in the present manuscript, using four major themes (Identity, Research/Theory, Diversity, and Role Expansion) to consider the degree to which the field of counseling psychology met these predictions in the year 2000. We conclude with a series of recommendations for the future.

Two Types of Low Test-Anxious (Low-Worry) Students

Wilbert J. McKeachie, Yi-Guang Lin, & Michael J. Middleton

(pp. 141-152)

ABSTRACT - Students who score high on measures of the worry component of test anxiety typically do not perform as well on tests that count for their final course grade as on similar measures that do not count for a grade. We hypothesized that some students who report low test anxiety are really highly anxious. To test this hypothesis low-worry-score students who did more poorly on a final course examination than on a test given as a review were compared with low worry-score students whose scores were similar to, or better, on the final examination than on the review. The results indicated that low-worry-score students whose performance was lower on graded measures than on a review test differed from other low-worry students in motivation and learning strategies. In fact their scores on the anxiety scale itself were lower than students who were truly low-anxious. These results were replicated in a second study.

Development of a Scale to Assist in Assessment and Treatment Planning: Psychometric Properties and Factorial Composition

Eugene R. Bonynge, Steven Thurber, &Helmut J. Hoffmann

(pp. 153-164)

ABSTRACT - Construction of a scale for purposes of assessment and treatment planning in a community mental health setting are presented. Content consisting of symptoms, psychological needs, functional considerations, and significant life events resulted in a 34 item Treatment Plan Development Scale (TPDS). Two separate studies were conducted. In Study 1, with 610 participants from an alcohol rehabilitation center, items were generated. In Study 2 at a community mental health center (N = 1323), psychometric properties were investigated that involved item analyses, internal consistency reliability, exploratory factor structure, and confirmatory factor structure. Seven oblique factors were confirmed: Mood, anxiety, self-discipline, relations, vocational, illness, and image. A unitary factor structure was also found to be tenable and was more parsimonious than the multidimensional model. Practical applications of the TPDS for both assessment and treatment planning, as well as further areas of research are discussed.