Models of counselor development have become very popular, but empirical research has found differences primarily between beginning graduate students and doctoral interns. In the research described here, a counseling self‐efficacy instrument was developed and was used to test hypotheses based on self‐efficacy theory and models of counselor development, both of which would make similar predictions about increases in counseling self‐efficacy resulting from clinical training and experience. The findings include strong reliability and validity evidence for the instrument and several significantly different groups of participants that correspond roughly to the groups hypothesized in stage models of counselor development.

Numerous biological and psychological factors associated with impaired neurological functioning have been identified as common among the homeless, but there has been relatively little systematic examination of the cognitive functioning of homeless people. This study explored the neuropsychological functioning of 90 homeless men. There was great variability in their test scores, but the presence of possible cognitive impairment was detected in 80% of the sample. Average general intellectual functioning and reading abilities were found to be relatively low, and the incidence of impairments in reading, new verbal learning, memory, and attention and concentration was high. These findings suggest that the homeless men in this study had considerable assessment and treatment needs that were not being met by most of the health and social services offered to them.

The movement to use empirically supported treatments has increased the need for researchers and supervisors to evaluate therapists' adherence to and the quality with which they implement those interventions. Few empirically supported approaches exist for providing these types of evaluations. This is also true for motivational interviewing, an empirically supported intervention important in the addictions field. This study describes the development and psychometric evaluation of the Motivational Interviewing Supervision and Training Scale (MISTS), a measure intended for use in training and supervising therapists implementing motivational interviewing. Satisfactory interrater reliability was found (generalizability coefficient 2 ϭ .79), and evidence was found supporting the convergent and discriminant validity of the MISTS. Recommendations for refinement of the measure and future research are discussed.

Interest in the study of psychological health and well-being has increased significantly in recent decades. A variety of conceptualizations of psychological health have been proposed including hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, quality-of-life, and wellness approaches. Although instruments for measuring constructs associated with each of these approaches have been developed, there has been no comprehensive review of well-being measures. The present literature review was undertaken to identify self-report instruments measuring well-being or closely related constructs (i.e., quality of life and wellness) and critically evaluate them with regard to their conceptual basis and psychometric properties. Through a literature search, we identified 42 instruments that varied significantly in length, psychometric properties, and their conceptualization and operationalization of well-being. Results suggest that there is considerable disagreement regarding how to properly understand and measure well-being. Research and clinical implications are discussed.

Acknowledgement:The behavioral and neurosciences have made remarkable progress in the past couple decades. Major advances have been made in understanding a wide range of phenomena, from epigenetics and neural plasticity to the nature of cognition, emotion, consciousness, moral reasoning, social behavior, and culture. Indeed, so much has been learned about human psychology recently that current explanations of many psychological mechanisms and processes are markedly different from those considered current just a generation ago.

A widespread professional and public controversy has recently emerged regarding recovered memo-ries of child sexual abuse, but the prevalence and nature of these memories have received limited empirical examination. This study (N = 553 nonclinical participants) found that very similar pro-portions of those with histories of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse reported that they had periods without memory of their abuse ( 21 %, 18%, and 18%, respectively). The responses of approximately one half of these participants suggested that they lacked conscious access to their abuse memories, whereas the responses from the others suggested that they had conscious access to their memories. A great deal of variance was found in the reported quality of general childhood memory and the offset of infantile amnesia, and the findings also suggest that it is normative to recover memories of child-hood. Each of these variables was also unrelated to the experience of child abuse.

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Family of origin characteristics are widely perceived as having a substantial influence on development but no self-report instrument has been available for comprehensively assessing memories of these characteristics. This report describes the development of the Family Background Questionnaire (FBQ), a 179-item instrument with 22 subscales designed to provide such an instrument. Reliability analyses found high internal consistency and temporal stability in FBQ scores, and validity analyses found substantial consistency between the theoretically derived subscales and the factor structure of the instrument. Moreover, the scores of siblings from the same families were correlated as expected.