Meditation includes a variety of techniques that share a common conscious effort to focus attention in a non-analytic way. In terms of its goals, meditation is a state of completely focused attention devoid of external thoughts--a state of heightened choice-less awareness. This study was designed to: (1) Identify and critically review professional literature on the effectiveness of meditation; (2) Provide an overall measure of effectiveness through the statistical meta-analysis technique; (3) Provide a classification of findings through the voting method; and (4) summarize and integrate highlights and major findings for the purpose of generating implications for future research and practice in counseling and psychotherapy.

This study resulted in the development of the Discouragement Scale for Adults (DSA), an assessment instrument for the Adlerian construct of discouragement in adults more than 18 years of age. The DSA is a 60-item instrument that contains five sub-scales corresponding to five life tasks identified in Adlerian literature as work, love, society, self, and spirituality. Age, gender, and ethnicity norms were established for the DSA using a diverse sample (N=586). Additional normative data was developed with a presumed discouraged sample (N=47), and a special sample of traditional college students aged 18-27 years (N=531). Findings on the norm sample indicated that females are less discouraged than males on the Total DSA and on society and spirituality sub-scales. The 18-34 year old group was more discouraged than other age groups on the Total DSA and on work, society, and spirituality sub-scales. Presumed discouraged sample findings indicated that females were less discouraged than males on the society sub-scale. College student findings indicated that females were less discouraged than males on the Total DSA and sub-scales of love, society, spirituality, and work. A significant difference was found among ethnic groups in self sub-scales. Students with no absences per week were less discouraged than …

The Discouragement Scale for Adults (DSA) was developed to assess for the Adlerian construct of discouragement in adults age 18 years and over. Data were collected from three samples: norm (n=586), presumed discouraged (n=47), and parents of children with craniofacial anomaly (n=105). Five subscales corresponding to life tasks identified in Adlerian literature as work, love, society, self-significance, and spirituality underlie the 60 item DSA. Item selection was based on ratings by five notable Adlerians and item correlations with scale scores. Gender, age, and ethnicity norms were established for the norm, presumed discouraged, and craniofacial samples. Across three samples, no significant ethnic differences were found. Normative findings indicated females are less discouraged than males on the Total DSA, the society and spirituality subscales. Age findings indicated the 18-34 year old sample is more discouraged than other ages on the Total DSA, the work, society, and spirituality subscales. Presumed discouraged findings indicated females are less discouraged than males on the society subscale. Craniofacial findings indicated females are less discouraged on the society subscale, but more discouraged on the self-significance subscale than males. Age findings indicated the 18-34 year old sample is more discouraged than other ages on the self subscale. Research on …

The purposes of the study were (1) to assess the validity and reliability of Values for Helpers, (2) to determine whether the test would be a usable instrument for analysis of value systems of mental health professionals, (3) to provide information on possible utilization of the test as a measurement tool for assessing the quality of relationship skills of helpers, and (4) to provide information of a heuristic nature for future research with Values for Helpers. To accomplish these purposes, the following questions were examined. 1. What are the relationships between the scales of the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values and Values for Helpers? 2. What are the relationships between the scales of the Personal Orientation Inventory and Values for Helpers? 3. What are the relationships between the total scores on Myrick and Kelly's Counselor Evaluation Rating Scale and the scales of Values for Helpers? Conclusions based on the results suggested that (1) there was acceptable reliability for Values for Helpers, (2) the tribalistic and conformist scales of Values for Helpers demonstrated negative convergent validity with the scales of the Personal Orientation Inventory, (3) the existential scale of Values for Helpers demonstrated positive convergent validity with the scales of the Personal …

The problem with which this investigation was concerned was that of determining the relationship between the variables of acculturation, imagery, self-concept, anxiety, stress, and seriousness of disease in Mexican-Americans. The purposes of this study were 1) to determine the statistical predictive efficiency of stress and its relation to disease, 2) to determine if a combination of anxiety, acculturation, self-concept, imagery, along with stress, would increase the statistical predictive efficiency concerning seriousness of disease, and 3) to provide information that may help to develope a theoretical base concerning the above variables and disease in Mexican-Americans.

The problem of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a group vocational counseling method among community college students. The purposes of this study are to present an application of developmental counseling to group vocational counseling with community college students, and to determine whether this vocational counseling program will have an effect upon certain selected variables. Self-concept congruence was measured by a semantic differential, the Personal Concept Scale; and vocational maturity was measured by the Attitude Scale of the Vocational Development Inventory. Anxiety associated with the concepts "myself," "other people," "choosing a career," and "five years from now" was assessed by the Concept-Specific Anxiety Scale. Certainty and satisfaction with vocational plans were assessed by eleven-point rating scales included on the Vocational Status Sheet, an instrument designed specifically for the present study. Included on this same instrument was a check list designed to measure vocational information gathering activity.

This study describes certain characteristics of mature women students in a community college in a large metropolitan district. Three standardized instruments gathered data on self-actualization, self concept, and locus of control. A questionnaire collected demographic and education data as well as information on attitudes, motivations, problems encountered, and suggestions. The women perceived attitudes of their families as positive toward their education. They were motivated by desires to gain knowledge, get degrees, obtain promotions, and improve themselves. They cited themselves, long-time ambition, friends, and husbands as influential in motivating them to attend college. They selected this community college because of its convenience. The majority were married, had children, and were of the middle to upper-middle class. Over half were employed. Their average age was thirty-seven. They were active outside the home, although continuing to perform most traditionally feminine home responsibilities. The majority were part-time students, classified as freshmen. Education, business, nursing, accounting, and psychology were popular majors. Over half planned to obtain bachelor's degrees. Most felt they encountered no problems in pursuing their education; lack of sufficient time was their major complaint. Most were pleased with their community-college experience. their suggestions included special counseling, flexible class schedules, a club for mature …

The study focused on the student service related problems of culturally distinct groups of students attending a community college. The groups selected for the study were sixty international students and sixty English as a Second Language students. The researcher administered the Michigan International Student Problem Inventory, an instrument which has been widely used to indicate foreign students' problems. Combining the use of naturalistic research methodology, the researcher utilized an indepth interview to document the problems they were facing. Patterns and trends among the problems were analyzed and reported. The results indicated that many international students experienced concerns in the area of financial aid, had difficulties with some of the immigration regulations and work restrictions, and experienced forms of racial and social discrimination. The English as a Second Language students tended to experience most difficulties in the area of English language functioning but also experienced problems related to academic functioning and making friends. The student service areas most closely related to the international students' concerns were Financial Aids, Admissions, Placement, Counseling, and English Language Services. English as a Second Language students' problems were most closely related to the areas of English Language Services, Admissions, Counseling, and Academic Advisement. Recommendations generated by …

Among the social sciences, guidance is relatively young, having evolved out of the American social experience with its concern for the welfare of the individual. As an independent discipline, guidance is about seventy years old. However, the foundations for guidance are imbedded in the nation's historical past. Beginning with seventeenth-century New Englanders, who stressed religious and economic reasoning, a systematic approach to occupational selection began. By the close of the colonial period, the precedent of freedom of choice of vocation and educational opportunity was well established.

The relationship "between touch "behavior, marital satisfaction, and touch expectation in stable marriages was explored. Subjects included couples, married a minimum of seven years, chosen at random from a community of middle-class families. Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale, Jourard's Body Accessibility Questionnaire, and a touch expectation question on the data sheet were utilized to measure each subject's level of marital satisfaction, touch behavior, and touch expectation. These instruments were hand delivered to each couple and returned by mail to the experimenter.

This study was designed to measure ten demographic membership variables of the Texas Association for Counseling and Development (TACD) and the respective relationships of those variables to ethical knowledge. It was also an effort to conduct a global study of the most recent revision (1988) of the AACD Ethical Standards and to find the relative knowledge of these standards by a random sample of 357 counselors in one state counseling organization.

This study investigated whether students in an Alternative School differed significantly from students who remain on a regular high school campus on measures of goals of misbehavior which included the factors of attention, power, revenge, inadequacy, and on measures of social interest. This study also investigated whether the attitudes of parents of Alternative School students differed significantly from the attitudes of parents of regular campus students on the factors of confidence, causation, acceptance, understanding and trust.

This study investigated the Adlerian concept of social interest m entering community college students to determine the predictive value of social interest for academic achievement and to determine the relationship between social interest and ethnicity and gender. Data for this study included age, gender, ethnic origin, high school class quarter, financial aid status, ACT Composite, grade point average, and scores on the Social Interest Scale. The results of stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that the social interest scores did not contribute significantly to the prediction of academic achievement. The results of an analysis of variance indicated a significant difference in the social interest scores of Anglo-American, Black-American, and Mexican-American students but the Scheffe test for multiple comparisons did not indicate any significant differences among or between the three ethnic groups. The results of a two-tailed t-test for independent samples indicated no significant difference in the social interest scores of males and females.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is the comparison of the effects of two group counseling approaches upon selected counselee characteristics. The purpose of the study was the determination of the relative effectiveness of counselor-led group counseling and leaderless group counseling upon anxiety, self-concept, and study habits and attitudes among high school seniors. Forty of ninety-six Russellville, Arkansas, high school seniors who were referred for group counseling by their high school teachers and counselors were randomly selected as subjects. Thirty of the students were assigned in a random manner to three ten-member experimental groups. Ten of the students were assigned in a random manner to a control group. Following treatment each group was reduced to eight subjects each because of poor participation by a few subjects in each group. The IPAT Anxiety Scale, the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, and the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes were administered to all subjects prior to and after ten weeks of treatment.

This research examined the influence of psychological temperament and family-of-origin socialization influences on relationship adjustment in marriage. The major goals were to determine: (a) if there was a relationship between the temperament of one mate in the marriage and the temperament of his or her spouse, and (b) if there was a relationship between the marital adjustment scores of a mate relative to either personal temperament or that of his or her spouse. A secondary purpose was to determine if certain family-of-origin socialization experiences influenced adjustment in marriage. One hundred seventy-nine couples (H = 358) completed three test instruments including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1962), Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976), and the Socialization Background Questionnaire (Church, unpublished), along with a demographic questionnaire. The subjects, volunteers from 12 churches in a large metropolitan area, had mean ages of 35.3 and 33.6 years for husbands and wives, respectively, and had been married for an average of 10.1 years. Five hypotheses and two research questions were tested at the .05 level of significance. The results gathered did not support the hypothesis that there was a relationship between temperament type and mate selection. Similarly, no support was evidenced for any specific relationship between …

Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology emphasizes the uniqueness of individuals and describes the life style, or personality, as the unique and characteristic pattern of coping with and solving problems and interacting with other people. The purpose of this study was the development of a similar instrument that would quantitatively identify life styles in children.

The effectiveness of guided imagery as an enhancement to the Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) program was explored during a shortened 8-week program using three parent groups of elementary-age students matched for parent training experience and couple participation: a) an imagery-modified STEP group (STEP-Im, n = 14); b) a traditional STEP group (STEP, n = 14); and c) a drop-out comparison group (n = 10). Guided imagery consisted of centering exercise(s) for focus and concentration; structured imagery of Adlerian concepts; and open-ended role-assumption imagery for clarifying personal values, the perspectives of others, and concept practice.

This study used a qualitative/phenomenological research methodology to examine the perspective of five bulimic subjects about their lives in order to understand the bulimic individual's point of view and develop a clearer picture of the world of the bulimic. This approach involved three interviews for each of the five subjects totalling 22 1/2 hours. The three interviews dealt with the subjects' past and present experiences and their ideas about the future. The qualitative/phenomenological methodology created an in-depth view of each subject's relationship to the beginning of her bulimia and its subsequent development. During the period when the interviews were being transcribed, patterns and concepts emerged and were examined. Nine categories were developed from this data reflecting some of the characteristics of a bulimic's personality. Six research questions were formulated and then answered by evaluating them in the light of the nine categories as well as data and descriptions from the interviews. No one single category was found to be uniquely dominant, but rather the categories tended to appear in a cluster-like fashion depending on the individual personality of the bulimic. The data of this study revealed a distinction between the personality and the behavior of the bulimic. A form with …

Utilizing ethnographic methodology, this study examined and described the filial therapy process to provide an in-depth understanding of the process, the relations in progress, and effects on the parent, child, and parent/child relationship. This study supports filial therapy as a viable option for educating parents in effective parenting and training as agents of change. The results appear to be generalizable to other parents engaged in learning filial therapy since previous research reported similar findings.

This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of the Landreth 10-week filial therapy model as an intervention for the parents of children experiencing learning difficulties.The purpose of this study was to determine if filial therapy is effective in: 1) increasing parental acceptance of children with a learning difficulty; 2) reducing the stress level of parents of children with learning difficulties; 3) decreasing social problems and total behavior problems of children with learning difficulties as reported by parents and teachers.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Intensive Filial Therapy in: (a) improving the self-concept of child witnesses of domestic violence; (b) reducing internalizing behavior problems, such as withdrawal, somatic complaints, anxiety and depression, of child witnesses of domestic violence; (c) reducing externalizing behavior problems, such as aggression and delinquency, of child witnesses of domestic violence; (d) reducing overall behavior problems of child witnesses of domestic violence; and (e) increasing communication of empathy between mothers and child witnesses of domestic violence. A second objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Intensive Filial Therapy with Intensive Individual Play Therapy and Intensive Sibling Group Play Therapy with child witnesses of domestic violence. The experimental group consisted of 11 child witnesses of domestic violence whose mothers received 12 Intensive Filial Therapy training sessions within a three week period and had 12 mother-child play sessions. The Intensive Individual Play Therapy comparison group, consisting of 11 child witnesses, and the non-treatment control group, consisting of 11 child witnesses, were utilized from the Kot (1995) study. The Intensive Sibling Group Play Therapy comparison group was utilized from the Tyndall-Lind (1999) study. Children in all studies completed the Joseph Preschool …