The Theoretical Orientation Profile Scale—Revised: A Validation Study

A study of the relationship between personality traits and theoretical orientation preferences

“…Internal consistency reliabilities for the theoretical orientation scales ranged from .80 (multicultural) to .93 (feminist) in the student sample, and from .85 (multicultural) to .95 (feminist) in the practitioner sample. These high reliability coefficients are comparable to those reported by Worthington and Dillon ().…”

“…Participants completed a measure adapted from the Theoretical Orientation Profile Scale‐ Revised (TOPS‐R; Worthington & Dillon, ). The TOPS‐R was designed to measure six theoretical orientations: psychoanalytic or psychodynamic, humanistic/existential, cognitive‐behavioural, family systems, multicultural, and feminist.…”

“…This method of establishing orientation preference is said to be problematic, because many therapists use individualistic interpretations of the theoretical labels and of their application to actual practice (Johnson & Brems, ; Poznanski & McLennan, ). As an alternative, some researchers advocate the use of a dimensional approach when investigating theoretical orientation preferences (e.g., Poznanski & McLennan, ), whereby participants are asked to rate the extent to which they adhere to different theoretical orientations (e.g., Scandell et al, ; Worthington & Dillon, ). As such, respondents are able to provide descriptive profiles of their theoretical orientation preferences.…”

School Counselors’ Attitudes Toward Evidence-Based Practices

“…To aid in interpreting the findings, we summed and averaged the scores for each subscale, with scores ranging from 1 to 5. Worthington and Dillon (2003) found through an exploratory factor analysis that a six-factor solution accounted for 87.5% of the explained variance with factor loadings ranging from .86 to .96 and no cross loading across the factors. Worthington and Dillon also found evidence for concurrent validity of the TOPS-R through correlations of the subscales with subscales on the Etiology Attribution Scale (Worthington, 1995).…”

“…Theoretical Orientation Profile Scale (TOPS)-Revised. The TOPS developed by Worthington and Dillon (2003) measures counselors' theoretical orientation across 18 items based on a 10point, Likert-type scale. In the original version, the measure consisted of six subscales with 3 items each that measure the following theoretical orientations: Cognitive/Behavioral, Multicultural, Family Systems, Humanistic/Existential, Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic, and Feminist.…”