Counseling, Higher Education & Special Education Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2757
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Item Providing Feedback to Group Co-Leaders to Improve Group Climate: An Intervention to Facilitate Similar Mental Models in Co-Leader Teams(2010) Miles, Joseph Richard; Kivlighan, Dennis M.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention that provided feedback to co-leaders of intergroup dialogues about their mental models of their group members. Co-leaders completed similarity ratings of their group members, and group members completed a measure of group climate following each of seven weekly sessions. Co-leader similarity data was used to derive each co-leader's mental model of her or his group members for each session. Co-leaders in the experimental condition received feedback in the form of a graphical representation of their own and their co-leader's mental model of their group members after each session, and were provided with discussion questions to help them examine these mental models. Co-leaders in the control condition did not receive feedback, but were given discussion questions regarding the most important incidents in their most recent dialogue session. The Engagement and Avoidance aspects of group climate in the intergroup dialogues developed as predicted (i.e., Engagement significantly increased and Avoidance significantly decreased), however there was no significant change in the Conflict aspect of the group climate over time. Additionally, co-leader mental model similarity was not significantly related to any of the aspects of group climate as predicted. Finally, results indicated that the feedback intervention did not significantly impact the level of similarity in co-leaders' mental models, or the group climate.Item Team Cognition in Group Interventions: The Relation Between Co-Leaders' Shared Mental Models of the Group and Group Climate(2007-05-01) Miles, Joseph R.; Kivlighan, Jr., Dennis M.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The relation between convergence in group co-leaders' schemas, or mental models, of their groups and group members' perceptions of group climate was examined. Co-leaders of eight inter-group dialogue groups provided paired comparison ratings of the similarity of group members, and group members provided group climate ratings, following each of seven sessions. Paired comparison ratings were analyzed using Pathfinder Network Analysis (Schvaneveldt, 1990) to examine the structure of each co-leader's mental model of her or his group, and to compare these mental models within co-leader pairs to determine degree of match in co-leaders' mental models for each co-leader pair, for each week (i.e., how similarly co-leaders of a group view their group). Cross correlations and growth curve analyses of the match and group climate data showed an increase in match of co-leaders' mental models across sessions, and that match in co-leader mental models was related to group climate.