An exploratory study of videotapes of long-term group psychotherapy of outpatients with major and chronic mental illness

This study explored patterns emerging in videotaped sessions of group psychotherapy with seven outpatients of a large mental health facility. The 22 sessions spanned the 12th to 27th months of the group's existence. Group members had long histories (25–50 years) of symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia. Each session was rated on the Group Environment Scale. One session from a group in its earlier stages was also rated on the same instrument to give some indication of baseline patterns. Analyses of changes across the 15 months were not statistically significant. However, some GES subscales, including Cohesion, Independence, and Self-Discovery, showed relatively high mean levels across the 15-month period. These elevations are discussed as suggesting the codevelopment of orientations that have sometimes been viewed as incompatible and unattainable for schizophrenics. Interpreted clinically, the GES patterns help to elaborate recent findings about the relatively good success of long-term group therapy with such populations. The study, although merely suggestive, illustrates the potential for gleaning solid and clinically useful data from group psychotherapy research.The authors would like to thank Drs. Jill Rierdan, Nina Fieldsteel, Joseph Christy, and an anonymous reviewer for their suggestions, Kendra Bryant for serving as the reliability rater, and Janet Eltinge for her skilled videotaping.     

Guidance and Counselling in Further and Higher Education

The publication in 1973 of Student Counselling in Practice signalled a new phase in the development of both careers and counselling services in the tertiary sector. The emergence of the professional careers adviser in higher education is described alongside the key role of the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services. The gradual professionalisation of student counselling is shown to have taken a different form, as a result of the policies of the Association for Student Counselling with its insistence on role definition and the accreditation of practitioners. Developments in further education are briefly reviewed, and a final section considers the present situation and possible future trends.     

Adolescent substance abuse

We have become a drug-oriented society. Cummings (1979), citing evidence from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, reports that one of every eleven adult Americans suffers from a severe addictive problem. Drug addition is epidemic among teenagers; one of every six teenagers suffers from a severe addictive problem. This paper focuses on adolescent drug/substance abuse.     

Effects of time of day and medium of presentation on immediate recall of violent and non-violent news

A sample of 103 subjects from a technical training college were randomly assigned to nine groups and presented with a sequence of violent and non-violent news stories either audiovisually (via television), in audio-only, or in print at three different times of day (morning—9.30 am, early afternoon—1.30 pm, and later afternoon—5.30 pm). Subjects were tested for immediate cued recall of story content immediately after presentation. There were significant main effects of presentation modality, time of day and news content. Memory for news was best from print and worst from the audiovisual presentation. Memory performance was best in the morning and worst in the evening. Violent news was recalled better than non-violent news in all media and at all times of day. There were also some interactions. Recall of violent news presented in audiovisual and audio-only modalities deteriorated more from morning to afternoon than did non-violent news recall. Non-violent news recall from these two media declined more rapidly in the second half of the day. With print, recall of both violent and non-violent news dropped off more in the late afternoon than in the morning. Practical implications of the findings for news presentation are discussed.     

A psychometric study of the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales

The Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES), a measure of family functioning, contains three scales: cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability. These were slightly modified (FACES- R) on the basis of pilot data and were administered to 42 clinic families (families seeking or receiving psychological services) and 206 nonclinic families. Support for the scales was found in high coefficient alpha reliabilities and similarity of the sample means and standard deviations to those of the standardization sample. However, there was little agreement among family members' scale scores. Therapists' ratings of cohesion and adaptability did not correlate with scale scores among clinic families. There was no difference between clinic and nonclinic samples on the cohesion or adaptability scales, although the social desirability scale did discriminate between groups. Factor analysis suggested that cohesion, adaptability, and social desirability cannot be clearly differentiated using this measure.This work was supported by the American Association of University Women and by Grant R01HD13820 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.     

An electronic aid for presenting equivalent information in concept identification

An electronic aid to assist in administering concept-identification problems with floating solutions is described. Digital circuitry generates all combination pairs from four selection switches, presents a particular comparison of these pairs, and, on command of the E, eliminates selected pairs from future comparisons. Each comparison is designed to minimize the information fed back to the S. The apparatus is used to administer and evaluate performance on conjunctive and disjunctive problems that are matched for information gain.     

A Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Children's Television Advertisements

Two sets of television advertisements were video-recorded from weekend children's television in London and New York and were coded by two white women in terms of their gender-role portrayals. The advertised products covered by this analysis included snack and fast food, toys and breakfast cereal. Each advertisement was coded according to nine criteria including the ethnicity and gender of the people appearing, gender of central figure and of any voice over in the commercial, presence or absence of music, and other sales-related content. In general, males were more numerous than females in both American and British advertisements. There were more similarities than differences between the two national markets in terms of the nature of gender-role portrayals, with males generally occupying more central and authoritative positions. Only two analyses yielded significant differences. Girls outnumbered boys in American commercials, but the opposite was true of British commercials. Hispanic males were present in American commercials but not in British commercials.