When Patients Threaten to Kill: A Texas View of Tarasoff (open access)

When Patients Threaten to Kill: A Texas View of Tarasoff

A serious problem confronts the psychologist whose patient threatens, within the privacy of a therapy session, to inflict violent harm upon some third person. Therapists in Texas face a risk of unjust legal liability because of a lack of widely accepted, clearly and fully articulated standards. A questionnaire was submitted to Texas psychologists and Texas judges of mental illness courts. It involved a hypothetical case of a patient who threatened to kill his girlfriend. The hypothesis that no consensus exists at present among psychologists or judges appears to be supported by the data. Comparisons are made of the attitudes of psychologists and judges. Correlations between psychologist attitudes and certain demographic and practice variables are reported. The need for new legislation in Texas concerning legal liability of therapists for the violent behavior of patients is discussed. Proposed legislation for Texas is set out. Among its important features are (1) recognition that continued therapy is itself a protective strategy and (2) establishment of good faith as the standard by which the behavior of the therapist is to be judged.
Date: August 1986
Creator: Morgan, Minor Latham
System: The UNT Digital Library
Revision of the Logical Reasoning Subtest of the California Test of Mental Maturity (open access)

Revision of the Logical Reasoning Subtest of the California Test of Mental Maturity

The purpose of the study was to develop a revision of the logical reasoning section of the California Test of Mental Maturity which increases its discriminative ability while maintaining an acceptable measure of reliability. Subjects were 102 students of general psychology classes at North Texas State University. All were administered the Logical Reasoning section of the California Test of Mental Maturity in its original form and an experimental revision of it (LRTR). The Wesman Personnel Classification Test was administered at the same time to demonstrate the tests' construct validity. Pearson product-moment correlations, item and homogeneity analyses were run. Results indicated that the revised test correlated significantly with the original test and the WPCT. Internal validity of the revised test was satisfactory, showing an improvement over the original test in terms of clarity, reliability and homogeneity.
Date: December 1986
Creator: Ryan, Patrice M. (Patrice Marie)
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of the Relationships of the Perceptions of College Environment by Existing Groups and Subgroups on the Campus of a Small Church-affiliated College (open access)

An Analysis of the Relationships of the Perceptions of College Environment by Existing Groups and Subgroups on the Campus of a Small Church-affiliated College

The CUES II was used to investigate and analyze the campus environment of a small church-affiliated college in California.
Date: December 1972
Creator: Zecher, Rodney L.
System: The UNT Digital Library