Date of Award

1996

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of therapist gender and style of therapy on the perceived satisfaction of the therapist. Through an experimental analogue design, the subjects were presented with one of four different video vignettes of a therapy session between a male college student and a therapist. The videos differentiated along two dimensions: therapist gender, and the style of therapy. The dependent variable was a rating of general satisfaction with the therapist in the video vignette as measured by the total score on the Counselor Rating Form--Short (CRF-S). In order to strengthen the overall statistical effect two covariates were used to extract the influence of the subjects' gender-role as measured by the PAQ. The following three null hypotheses were explored in this study, with a significance level set at $p < .05.$ (1) There will be no significant difference between subjects' ratings of the male and female therapists on ratings of general satisfaction. (2) There will be no significant difference between subjects' ratings of instrumental and expressive therapy styles on ratings of general satisfaction. (3) There will be no significant interaction effect for gender of therapist and style of therapy on ratings of general satisfaction. Subjects were caucasian male undergraduates at a small midwestern university and a small private engineering college. The final sample consisted of 159 subjects. To test the three null hypotheses, the data were analyzed using a two-way analysis of covariance. The results of the analysis of data did not produce significance at alpha =.05 level for any of the three null hypotheses.

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