Project 1, Nature and Severity of College Students' Counseling Concerns (1991)
In 1991, The Research Consortium implemented its first study, "Nature and Severity of College Students' Counseling Concerns," which was a survey of students seeking counseling services. The main goal was to establish baseline measures about the severity of students' concerns so that changes or fluctuations over time could be ascertained. In essence, we were attempting to provide data about the variations in types and severity of presenting problems over the next several years. A four-page optical scan booklet. the Counseling Concerns Survey, was constructed with the following sections: a demographics page (including age, classification, major, college/school, ethnicity) with questions about previous counseling and use of prescribed psychiatric medication, a 42-item Presenting Problems List constructed from lists submitted by 12 member centers, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and an 18-item list of Family Experiences involving various family history characteristics. Students seeking services at the counseling centers involved in the consortium were surveyed over the course of 12 months, resulting in data from some 3,000 clients from 32 centers.
