CMHC Research | CMHC Welcome Page
Chris Brownson, Ph.D.
National Coordinator
C.Brownson@mail.uhs.utexas.edu
By way of background, The Research Consortium of Counseling and Psychological Services in Higher Education was founded in 1990 under the leadership of David Drum, Ph.D. and Augustine Barón, Psy.D. of the Counseling and Mental Health Center, The University of Texas at Austin. An interim steering committee of 10 university counseling center directors met in Austin in March, 1990 to design the structure of the consortium and the first study to be conducted. Subsequently, an additional 22 centers were recruited for the first study based on regional representation and each director's expressed interest in research endeavors. Presently, about 45 centers participate in Research Consortium studies. Each counseling center is responsible for seeking approval from its local Institutional Review Board for each project.
Project 1: In 1991, The Research Consortium implemented its first study, "Nature and Severity of College Students' Counseling Concerns," which was a survey of students seeking counseling services. The main goal was to establish baseline measures about the severity of students' concerns so that changes or fluctuations over time could be ascertained. In essence, we are attempting to provide data about the variations in types and severity of presenting problems over the next several years. A four-page optical scan booklet. the Counseling Concerns Survey, was constructed with the following sections: a demographics page (including age, classification, major, college/school, ethnicity) with questions about previous counseling and use of prescribed psychiatric medication, a 42-item Presenting Problems List constructed from lists submitted by 12 member centers, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and an 18-item list of Family Experiences involving various dysfunctional family history characteristics. Students seeking services at the counseling centers involved in the consortium were surveyed over the course of 12 months, resulting in some 3,000 clients from 32 centers.
Project 2: In 1994-95, The Research Consortium conducted a similar study focused on the mental health concerns of students who had not sought counseling (i.e., a non-clinical sample) so that we could compare them to the clinical sample. The same Counseling Concerns Survey was used in this second study so that direct comparisons could be made. Each center recruited as diverse a sample as it could from students who had not sought counseling at the time of contact, resulting in some 2,500 participants from 28 campuses. Both of these projects demonstrated that the consortium was a viable mechanism for conducting nationwide studies with sizable samples.
Project 3. Building on the success of these first two projects, The Research Consortium implemented a psychotherapy process/outcome study to investigate the impact of counseling services on the mental health concerns of college students. Students were recruited for the study during the 1997-98 school year when they came to the counseling centers for their intake. The student agreed to participate by filling out a consent form and was then instructed to complete the following forms before the start of the intake: Counseling Concerns Survey and the Stages of Change Measure. Before each subsequent individual therapy session, the client filled out the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45) (see description below). An optional, though highly recommended, measure that each center was encouraged to include is the Working Alliance Inventory completed by both the client and the therapist before the start of the fourth session of therapy. Six weeks from the date of termination, the student was mailed the OQ-45 and the Service Satisfaction Scale-30 as follow-up measures. Information about therapist theoretical orientation was obtained using the Coan Theoretical Orientation Survey. Data were obtained on 4,500 clients and 241 therapists across 42 centers.
Project 4: In order to continue establishing a data base which includes both clinical and non-clinical samples, our fourth project concentrated on recruiting students who had not sought counseling at the time they were surveyed. They were asked to fill out the same Counseling Concerns Survey booklet that was used in Project 3. Such sampling helped to determine differences in mental health concerns experienced by students who seek counseling versus those who do not avail themselves of such services. This fourth sampling will also allow us to compare and contrast students' mental health concerns over a 12-year time span (i.e., across the previous three samples).
The Counseling Concerns Survey (CCS), a four-page optical scan questionnaire, was designed specifically for the studies. The latest CCS consists of five sections:
1. A demographics section that asks for the person's age, gender, grade point average, academic classification, major field of study, and ethnicity. It also contains four questions about a student's previous use of psychological counseling, current and previous use of psychiatric medications, and treatment for a physical or mental disability.
2. A 42-item Presenting Problems list developed from lists provided by 12 counseling centers which were then reduced to what was considered to be a comprehensive, non-redundant set. Each problem is rated as to current amount of distress (severity) experienced by the student on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = extremely), and the duration (chronicity) of the problem on a 6-point scale (1 = less than week; 6 = over three years).
3. The Outcome Questionnaire-45 is based on principles of dose-effect/response studies and demonstrates reasonably good psychometric properties. It contains three sub-scales: Symptom Distress (emphasizing anxiety and depressive symptoms), Interpersonal Relationships (emphasizing the quality of family and intimate relationships) and Social Role (focused on the quality of functioning in work, school, and family roles).
4. An 18-item Family Experiences list, composed expressly for the CCS, intended to measure the occurrence of problematic family history events which may have influenced a student's overall psychological development (e.g., parent with a drinking problem, physical or sexual abuse in the family). Students are asked to indicate whether or not each event happened in their family during their childhood or adolescence using the following scale: 1 = Yes, 2 = No, 3 = Unsure.
5. Five questions related to substance use.
Click below to open the research reports presently available. You will need the free software Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print the following PDF files which provide the results for the Outcomes Project:
If you have any problems opening the links, please contact Dr. Chris Brownson, National Coordinator. Be sure to check back to this page for additional reports as they become available.
CMHC Research | CMHC Welcome Page
UT Counseling & Mental Health Center
University of Texas at Austin
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