Date of Award

5-1-1985

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

Abstract

Conceptual level, hypothesis formation training, college grade point average, counselor preparation level, and age were studied to assess their relationship to clinical judgment. The sample consisted of female volunteer social work students, who were divided into training (26 subjects) and control (14 subjects) groups. The training group received hypothesis formation training, and the control group simply observed a counseling session. The subjects responded to the Paragraph Completion Method (Hunt, Butler, Noy & Rosser, 1978) and the Modified Clinical Assessment Questionnaire.

The responses were analyzed in terms of hypotheses that were designed to address: 1. The extent to which the study variables were predictive of clinical judgment. 2. The differences in clinical judgment between hypothesis formation training and control subjects when conceptual level was covaried.

Results indicated significant relationships between conceptual leve"1 and clinical judgment, and between conceptual level and the clinical judgment subcategories of information sought and divergent questions. Significant subcategory intercorrelations were between divergent questions and categories of information sought, and between numbers of instances used to support conclusions and categories of information sought. The only other significant relationship found w£S a negative correlation between training group and number of instances used to support conclusions. Conceptual level was found to be predictive of clinical judgment, while age and conceptual level were found to be predictive of categories of information sought and number of divergent questions, ho significant differences in clinical judgment were found Letweet. hypothesis formation training and control subjects when conceptual level was covaried, 1idicating that the hypothesis formation training did not enhance the clinics1 judgment skills of the training subjects.

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