The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Bibliotherapy for Enhancing the Psychological Health of Japanese College Students Living Abroad☆
Section snippets
Participants and recruitment
The participants were 70 Japanese international students (44 females; average age 23.6, range 20–26) enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), during the 2008–2009 academic year. In accord with the population-based focus of the present study, participants constituted a majority of all 138 Japanese international students at the university at the time. Power analysis, conducted using G⁎Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007), showed that the sample had adequate power (> .9) to
Results
A flow chart of participation is shown in Fig. 1. All totaled, 60 of the 70 participants (86%) had complete data in the main part of the study (pre, post, and the first follow-up). In the wait-list arm, eight participants failed to complete the fourth and final assessment after they too received the book. Including this final assessment, 84% of the participants provided at least one postbook assessment package, and 74% provided complete data.
Across both arms of the study, during the 8 weeks the
Discussion
Although college is often thought of as a carefree time, the evidence suggests otherwise. College students in general experience remarkably high rates of distress. The most recent report of the American College Health Association (2008) found that about 13% of college students reported having symptoms of anxiety and more than 18% reported depression symptoms; 43% said they felt so depressed at some point in the academic year that it was difficult to function; 10% had seriously considered
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Cited by (0)
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As part of the editorial process, information about two process measures was removed to shorten the manuscript. Values consistency from the Personal Values Questionnaire (PVQ; Blackledge & Ciarrochi, 2006) and accepting without judgment from the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS; Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004). Both were impacted by ACT and values consistency mediated GHQ outcomes. Values consistency was significantly worse at pre for those in the ACT condition. Adjusting for that difference did not impact outcomes. Change scores were used in meditational analysis for all process measures because of this predifference, however. Details are available from the authors.
The authors would like to thank Matt McKay, Elizabeth Adamska, Mariko Mukaibo, Sayo Uyama, and the entire staff at New Harbinger Publications for their generous and ethical support of research focused on their self-help volumes. Volumes were supplied by the publisher at cost for evaluation. The authors of this study received no financial benefit from this study per se, however, it should be noted that the book evaluated generates royalties for Dr. Hayes.