This study investigates and evaluates the effects of an eighteen-hour weekend encounter group and three twelve-week groups--a weekly counseling group, a Bible discussion group, and a church attendance group, upon selected personality and behavioral variables, group morale and social integration. Subjects were forty-eight volunteers from a 250-member Protestant, evangelical church in a suburb of a Texas city of five-hundred thousand people. Six men and six women were randomly assigned to each of the four groups. Data analyzed were the pre-, post-, and post-post-experiment scores of the Personal Orientation Inventory, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and the sociometric variables based on Bonney's "Criteria for a Better Group on Sociometric Scales". The .05 level of significance was required for rejection of the null hypotheses. The statistical analyses were accomplished by applying a one-way analysis of co-variance design to the raw scores from the Personal Orientation Inventory, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and two of the three sociometric variables--mutual choices and opposite sex choices. The sociometric variable, choices between upper and lower quarters, was computed with the z formula. The sociometric data, mutuals and opposite sex choices on the encounter group, were further analyzed using the single-factor analysis of variance with repeated measures. …

This study investigates the effect of Witkin's cognitive-style variable on training success in two different orientations to counseling. Field-dependent individuals exhibit more social orientation, social compliance, and emotional warmth than field-independent individuals. Conversely, field-independent individuals exhibit more internal directedness, achievement orientation, emotional distance, and analytical task orientation than field-dependent individuals. Traits associated with field dependence appeared more complementary to an interpersonal-skills counseling approach, while traits associated with field independence appeared more complementary to behavior-modification techniques. Thus it was hypothesized that field-dependent individuals would be significantly more successful and satisfied with interpersonal skills training than would field-independent individuals, and that field-independent individuals would be more successful and satisfied with behavior modification training.

This investigation of failure in the first two grades and the effectiveness of group counseling upon the failing children seeks first to determine whether students who have failed hold a different self-concept or attitude toward school from those of students who have not. The second aim is to determine the effect of group counseling on self-concept and attitude toward school of failing students. The third purpose is to analyze the implications of these findings for elementary school counselors and teachers. The investigation's two phases include a survey study and an experimental study. The ninety-six subjects for the survey phase were selected by identifying forty-eight first and second grade students who failed their grade level in the 1972-1973 school year, and by randomly selecting a control group of forty-eight second and third grade students who had not failed a grade. For the experimental phase of the study, the forty-eight failing students were divided into an experimental group and a control group. Twenty-four were randomly placed in the counseling groups, with the remaining twenty-four as a control group.