Contemporary study: Howells et al Flashcards
What were the aims of Howells et al study?
- They wanted to test whether a prison based anger management programme was more effective than having no treatment a all.
- The study was also designed to explore why some offenders benfit from treatment more than others as well as looking at the pre treatment characteristics that determine the success in AM programmes
Who was the sample of Howells et al study?
- Male prisoners who were recruited from prisons in Southern and Western Australia
- 418 prisoners were recruited, 86% of whom were in prison, whilst the other 14% were from a community based coreection centre.
- 65% described their ethnic background as Australian/ New Zealand, 19% as Aboriginal and 16% as other
Out of the original study in Howells et al study- how many completed the a 6 month follow up assessment?
21
How was the control group collected in Howell’s et al study?
The control group was collected from the same target population as the experiemental group but were on a waiting list for the anger programme.
Did both the experimental and control group complete behavioural measures?
All ppts completed behavioural measures of anger before and after the intervention for the experimental group, and then a selected smaller group were assessed again 2 to 6 months later.
What was the procedure in Howells et al study?
- Involved cognitive preparation, identifying trigger to anger, relaxation as part of skills acquisition and application practice. There were 10 2 hour sessions in all.
- A number of different ways of measuring the success of the programme were used, such as questionnaires which recorded anger intensity, expressuib abd control. Efffectiveness in dealing with anger and the individuals motivation to change also formed part of the data.
- Finally, prison staff were required to monitor progress using a range of observational measures. Both groups of offenders completed these measures at the same time
What were the findings of Howells et al study?
- When all ppts were tested immediately post intervention, imporovements in the anger management group were relatively modest, and on most of the measures were not statistically significant compared to the non treatment control group
- The anger management group had significantly better knowledge of their own anger than the control group at the end of the intervention, although this difference was less marked after 6 months
- The biggest imporvements were observed in those prisoners who had the most intense anger and least control at the beginning of the investigation (is some cases whether they went through the intervention or not)
- Finally, success on the programme was also highly correlated with treatment readiness- that is, those who appreared to be most open to change at the beginning og the investigation, and were highly committed to treatment, tended to experience the most improvement
What are some conclusions of Howells et al study?
- The study suggests that the overall impact of AM programmes is rather small. Although there were gains for the experimental group on some measures, these were not significantly different from the control group. Indeed the control group also experienced positive outcomed. This siggests that merely analysing one’s own anger using self report assessments may be beneficial in the absence of treatment
- The improvement in knowledge of anger suggests that AM best function may be educatonal in that it leads to greater self awareness
- Finally, the findings related negative symptoms and treatment readiness suggests that there are important individual differences in who is likely to benefit from AM intervention, and that his should be considered when deciding treatement
What is a strength of having a large sample for Howells et al study?
The initial sample size is very large for a study of its kind
Earlier studies measuring the success of anger management programmes were often restricted to a single person or young offenders institute.
What is a negative of Howells’ sample size?
Despite the dace that 418 ppts were involved at the beginning of the investigation, only 78 completed the 2 month follow up, and just 21 completed the 6 month follow up because of practical problems.. This is a flaw as the final analysus of long term effects of the programme may be biased by the fact that individuals with particular kinds of problems may have fropped out, such as the most angry or least receptive criminals
What is a negative of having no random allocation in Howells et al study?
A methodological weakness of the investigation is the way in which control and experimental groups were decided.
PPts were not randomly allocated to the 2 conditions of the investigation. The control group were drawn from a list of offenders who were awaitng AM but the unlike the control had not yet been imporved for a programme. This was judged by the researchers to be a natuural comparison froup. However this meant that individual differences were not controlled so affects validity
What is a weakness of using self report measures?
May have produced unreliable data
To measure pre and post treatment anger, Howells et al, used an impressive range of assessment measures. However, the use of questionnaires to measure one’s own level of anger has been criticised. Anger, is subjective, difficult to quantify and the experience of it may vary from person to person.
This may reduce the scientific value of data obtaines.
What is an application of Howells findings?
The findings may generalise to other forms of therapy.
The notion that offenders are more successful if they have accepted the need for change is a key componenet of other sorts of prison based therapy, such as social skills training. More broadly, motivational enhancement therapy (MET) is a behavioural therapy which aims to develop treatment readiness before embarking on drug or alcohol treatment
