Exploratory study of factors associated with attitude toward referring others to psychological services

Abstract

This exploratory study investigated factors related to attitudes toward referring others to psychological services. In the preliminary investigation, participants were presented a hypothetical situation of a friend who has psychological problems, and were asked whether they would refer the friend to a psychological service, elaborating on the reason for their choice. These descriptions were categorized using the KJ-method independently for three groups: referring group, ambivalent group, and non-referring group. Content analysis categories of, “image of utilizing psychological services”, “perception about seriousness of psychological problem”, and “mental burden of a friend referred to a psychological service” arose as key factors worthy of investigation further in the main research, which quantitatively investigated the relation between these main factors and attitudes toward referring others to a psychological services. Results indicated that “indifference to psychological help” which was a subscale of “image of utilizing psychological services” scale had a negative relationship, and “perception of seriousness of psychological problem” had a positive relationship with attitudes toward referring to psychological services. The implications of these findings for effective intervention to foster behavior of referring to psychological service were discussed.