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Predicting the acceptability of treatment interventions through psychological assessment
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between client gender and client personality to acceptability of interventions for anxiety. One hundred and fifty-seven college students in Educational Psychology classes at a Midwestern university participated in this study. The Intervention Rating Profile (Witt & Martens, 1983) was used to assess participants acceptance of three common treatments for anxiety (cognitive, behavioral, and medical). Another instrument, created by the author, was used to assess behavioral acceptance of these same interventions (Behavioral Acceptance Measure, present author, 1992). The participants filled out the California Psychological Inventory (Gough, 1987) to assess personality characteristics. They then read over a description of Generalized Anxiety derived from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Revised (APA, 1987) and were asked to portray a client with this disorder for purposes of the study. Finally, participants read each of three descriptions of treatments for anxiety (cognitive, behavioral, and medical) and rated their acceptance of each on the Intervention Rating Profile and Behavioral Acceptance Measure. The analyses conducted yielded four personality characteristics from the CPI that were predictive of intervention acceptability: Socialization, Responsibility, Communality, and Femininity/Masculinity. These four characteristics were predictive, however, not overly accurate. Gender was not a significant predictive variable. Further analyses yielded significant difference in acceptability over the three intervention strategies. The cognitive treatment was significantly more acceptable to the participants than the behavioral treatment and the behavioral treatment was significantly more acceptable to the participants than the medical treatment. Qualitative analyses of participants responses as to why they preferred one intervention over the others were reported and discussed. Themes as to why these results were found were discussed. The relationship between this study and previous research was discussed and suggestions for future research proposed.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy|Personality|Psychology
Recommended Citation
Nessetti, Matthew Burr Reynolds, "Predicting the acceptability of treatment interventions through psychological assessment" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9410363.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9410363