Rudolph

TABLE 1

Treatment and Comparison Subjects' IAH, HAS, and CEM Pretest, Posttest, and Follow-up Ms and SDs, and t values and p levels for Pretest Differences

Pretest

Posttest

Follow-up

Measure

t value

IAH

Treatment

80.10

15.80

87.52

15.58

87.65

0.14

Comparison

82.61

15.40

<.05(ns)

84.06

15.32

80.92

14.87 14.12

HAS

Treatment

71.48

12.38

76.52

11.40

0.57

Comparison

<.05(ns)

71.90

10.11

70.81

9.96

76.00 69.96

10.20

9.08

CEM

Treatment

25.13

4.47

27.63

4.84

0.18

<.05(ns)

Comparison

25.52

3.82

25.72

4.06

DISCUSSION

The results of this study support the proposal that a multimodal treatment consisting of information about homosexuality and gay/lesbian counseling, when of sufficient length and adequately comprehensive in content, can result in significant and possibly enduring positive modification of attitudes toward homosexuality and greater therapeutic effectiveness in a gay/lesbian counseling context. (Although as 5 of the 21 treatment group CEM protocols were eliminated as unusable, the confidence with which the treatment group can be said to have grown more gay/lesbian counseling effective is diminished.) These results are consistent with the body of work on changing attitudes toward the stigmatized and sexuality (Kilman, Wanlass, Sabalis, & Sullivan, 1981; Schneider & Anderson, 1980; Voss, 1980) and help to clarify the inconclusive findings of previous research that varied greatly in methodological sophistication and thoroughness.

Triandis (1971) identified three components of an attitude: (a) the cognitive, or the idea used in thinking; (b) the affective, or the emotion behind, or feeling accompanying, the idea; and (c) the behavioral, or a predisposition to action. The workshop treatment was comprehensive in positively affecting all three components. Possibly the workshop's objective information modified ideas about homosexuality (e.g., via didactic lectures), personal experiences modified feelings about gay men and lesbian women (e.g., via exposure to models, role plays), and both modified behavior. This would be consistent with the information-plus-exposure model of treatment, as both are necessary but neither alone are sufficient to effect positive attitude change toward the stigmatized (Anthony, 1972).

Does attitude change equal behavior change? Is it safe to assume that the participants' increased scores on the CEM, a quasibehavioral measure representing the behavioral component of Triandis' model, mean they would actually be more effective counseling a gay or lesbian client? One can question

TABLE 2

IAH, HAS, and CEM Pretest/Posttest and Pretest/ Follow-up ANOVA Interaction Effects

Measure

IAH HAS

df 1, 50

1, 50

Pretest/Posttest F 15.11 <.01 11.47 <.01

df 1,50

1,50

Pretest/Follow-up F 14.75 10.46

Р <.01 <.01

CEM

1, 43

4.16

<.05

the attitude-behavior link. The CEM comes much closer to sampling subjects' gay/lesbian counseling behavior than any previous measure and appears to represent at least a "predisposition to action." To help illuminate this attitude-behavior link, counselors' in-vivo behavior with gay and lesbian clients should be observed to provide a more complete picture of the complex of factors composing the counseling interaction in toto (e.g., body language, paralinguistics).

There are other limitations of the present study. As the research design was quasiexperimental rather than true experimental, and the treatment and comparison participants were drawn from somewhat different subject pools, there may have been other unmeasured variables differentiating the two groups and impacting on the results. Also, as the comparison group was a no-treatment rather than an alternate-treatment control, it is not possible to explicate what aspect of the multimodal treatment accounted for what portion of the explained variance. That is, what content presented by whom in which medium accounted for what percentage of positive attitude change and increased counseling effectiveness? Finally, although the positive 8-week follow-up implies that the gains evident at the immediate posttesting may be permanent, one could speak with considerably greater confidence if the posttesting period had been longer (e.g., 6 months, a year, or more). Although these limitations impose a tentativeness on the findings, the study represents the most thorough investigation of changing homosexual attitudes to date.

Ongoing research in gay/lesbian counseling is urgently needed. Counselors need to be prepared to competently address the needs of this critically needy population, especially in the current atmosphere of widespread antihomosexual sentiment. The current study appears to be a promising step toward minimizing antihomosexual sentiment and behavior in counselors who work with gay and lesbian clients.

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James Rudolph is a staff psychotherapist at the Constance Bultman Wilson Center for Adolescent Psychiatry, Faribault, Minnesota. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to James Rudolph, 1906 3rd Avenue, 36, Minneapolis, MN 55404.

JOURNAL OF COUNSELING & DEVELOPMENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1989 VOL. 68