Marriage and Family Therapy Within Counselor Education

Although the caseloads of mental health professionals usually reflect a high percentage of marital and family problems, few professional counselors have had any formal marriage and family therapy training. Departments of counselor education could expand to provide this training, and thus meet a need and an expressed interest of counseling students. This article describes one counselor education department's response to the need for comprehensive doctoral training in marriage and family therapy.     

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF COMPLEXITY AND PROCESS IN MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS1,2

In this study hierarchical syndrome analysis was used to investigate empirically the clustering of tests each of which consisted of items based upon the rationale of a particular category of the Bloom Taxonomy (i.e., an “application” test, an “analysis” test, etc.). Each test included items related to eight physical science principles. Thus an attempt was made to hold the content as constant as possible and systematically vary process in the formation of the tests. The data indicate possible ways of combining Taxonomy item types based on the psychological distance between the categories.