Psychological symptoms of counseling center clients.

A multivariate categorization scheme for classifying clients' presenting problems was empirically developed. Six hundred and eleven clients who sought services at a university counseling center completed the Computerized Assessment System for Psychotherapy Evaluation and Research (L. McCullough & A. D. Farrell, 1983). Descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, cluster differentiation by external variables, and stability of cluster solutions across subsamples are presented. Nine clusters of clients with different types of presenting problems that were stable across subsamples were identified. This multivariate approach provides a more complex assessment of clients' presenting problems that may have implications for case disposition, therapeutic interventions, prevention interventions, and research pertaining to coping, help seeking, and therapeutic outcomes.

Presenting problems of university counseling center clients: A snapshot and multivariate classification scheme.

Heppner¹,

Kivlighan²,

Good³

et al. 1994

Appropriateness of SCL-90-R adolescent and adult norms for outpatient and nonpatient college students.

Todd

Deane²,

McKenna³

1997

Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) scores of 209 undergraduate clients from a university-based psychology clinic were compared with those of 435 nonpatient undergraduates and with adult and adolescent norms. College student outpatients were similar to adult outpatients on the SCL-90-R. However, when compared with norms based on unscreened community samples, nonpatient undergraduates were, like adolescents, considerably more symptomatic than adults. Although nonpatient undergraduates were significantly less symptomatic than outpatient undergraduates, the two distributions overlapped considerably, which presents a high risk of misclassification. Comparison of the study samples with other published data supports the generalizability of these findings. The data's implications for the use of the SCL-90-R in evaluating symptomatology and the clinical significance of change in college students are discussed.The increasing use of measures of clinical significance for evaluating client status and change requires appropriate instruments with norms for both normal and pathological populations (Jacobson, Follette, & Revenstorf, 1984). Johnson, Ellison, and Heikkinen (1989) argued that the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994;Derogatis & Cleary, 1977;Derogatis, Lipman, & Covi, 1973), which is widely used for both clinical and research purposes (Beutler & Crago, 1983;Waskow & Parloff, 1975), could be useful for evaluating the psychological symptoms of university counseling center clients. Norms are available for the SCL-90-R for adult outpatients and inpatients as well as for populations of adults and adolescents labeled "nonpatient"; however, these nonpatient populations should more accurately be called "unscreened" because they did not exclude individuals who were cur-

What does the Brief Symptom Inventory measure in college and university counseling center clients?

Hayes

1997

This study examined the reliability and validity of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) with a college and university counseling center population. Specifically, 2,078 clients from 31 counseling centers completed the BSI at intake. An exploratory factor analysis conducted on half the sample yielded a 6-factor solution rather than the 9-factor solution proposed by L. R. Derogatis (1993) or the 1-factor solution identified in previous research. A subsequent confirmatory factor analysis conducted on the remainder of the sample revealed support for the 6-factor model. Implications for using the BSI with counseling center clients, normative data based on client sex, and recommendations for further instrument development are discussed.I am grateful for the administrative and data collection efforts of the Research Consortium of Counseling and Psychological Services in Higher Education and thank in particular Dennis Heitzmann, Gus Baron, and Steve Fttzpatrick. I also appreciate the helpful comments on drafts of this article provided by Kathleen Bieschke, Robert Slaney, and Beverly Vandiver.