Browsing by Theses - Department "Department of Counselling & Psychology"

This study examined the acculturation experience of Mainland Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the context of Hong Kong. The relationship between acculturation stress, acculturation orientation, self-efficacy, major socio-demographic factors such as length of residency in Hong Kong, Cantonese language proficiency, and psychological functioning in the two target immigrant groups. There were a total of 141 participants in the study, with 70 Mainland Chinese immigrants, and 71 Pakistani immigrants. Consistent with past research findings, higher acculturation stress was a significant predictor and positively associated with depression, anxiety, and general stress symptoms for Mainland Chinese group, and with depression and general stress symptoms for Pakistani group. Higher self-efficacy was a significant predictor, and negatively associated with depression and anxiety symptoms in both immigrant groups. In contrary with previous literatures, the endorsement of dominant society immersion did not have a positive impact on immigrants’ psychological functioning. In addition, the endorsement was found to be a protective factor in the reduction of depression symptoms for Pakistani immigrants, and reduction of general stress symptoms in both groups. As for socio-demographic factors, only proficiency in reading Chinese words was a significant predictor associated with a decrease in general stress symptoms for Pakistani immigrants. Implication, limitation and future directions were further discussed.

Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Dept. of Counselling and Psychology.
95 pages

Existing literature has revealed the halo effects of physical attractiveness and age. This dissertation aimed to investigate whether clients’ first impression of therapists influences clients’ self-disclosure. Ninety female and 39 male Chinese young adults (18 - 31 years) completed a self-report inventory of self-disclosure by referring to a scenario and a female photo. Subjective ratings of participants on therapists’ physical attractiveness were used. Results indicated that both male and female participants rated a self-perceived physically more attractive therapist more favourably. Female participants disclosed more to a more attractive therapist. It was suggested that perceived therapists’ physical attractiveness directly or indirectly enhanced participants’ self-disclosure by means of increasing participants’ comfort level and perceptions of therapists’ trustworthiness. The perceived much older therapist was rated less attractive than the slightly older therapist. When attractiveness was controlled, participants disclosed more on some topics to the much older therapist. Effects of therapists’ attractiveness appeared to be stronger among individuals with average self-esteem than individuals with low self-esteem. Moreover, the negative association between female participants’ self-esteem and therapists’ attractiveness scores suggested a possible self-evaluation or comparison of appearance in front of a same-sex therapist. Therapists are recommended to be more aware of how their appearance may influence their clients’ feelings and behaviours (including self-disclosure).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2013.

PSY 372: Research Project.

The current study is inspired by Linda Gantt’s Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS), in which Gantt compared the drawing’s artistic characteristics with properties in DSM-III (Gantt, 2001). The current study is to investigate whether depression, anxiety, and stress have impact on Draw-A-Person-in-the-Rain (DAPR) projective drawing’s content and art elements, and the similarities and difference in the 14 items of FEATS scoring of the three factors. This study demonstrated a mixed research design with experimental procedure as survey, brief interview and observation for data collection. Thematic analysis was used as the interview encoding. 61 participants, with 18 males and 43 females, aged between 18 to 29 were recruited. An integrated model is created to address the issue of identifying Depression, Anxiety, and Stress level in DAPR using implied energy, color fit, and prominence of color in FEATS scale.

58 pages

PSY 371: Research Project.

This study aimed to compare college students majoring in psychotherapy related fields and college students majoring in other fields in terms of their attitudes toward seeking psychological help, mental health literacy, and self-stigma. Comparisons were also made regarding the patterns of relationships between the three variables. A cross-sectional design was adopted. The results showed that psychotherapist trainees had higher levels of mental health literacy than college students of other majors, but no significant differences were found in help-seeking attitudes and self-stigma. For both groups of students, mental health literacy and self-stigma were significant predictors of help-seeking attitudes. Content analysis was conducted to find out the factors which influenced students’ decision to seek psychological help other than the ones investigated in the questionnaire. Implications to counsellor training and enhancing college students’ help-seeking in general were discussed.

60 pages

PSY 372: Research Project.

PSY 372: Research Project.

The current study investigates the effect of biological birth order and psychological birth order on family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem. The result suggested that the biological birth order failed to predict the family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem of individuals. On the other hand, the psychological birth order was a more adequate predictor on family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem. Current result indicated that over-attention in parenting could lead to child’s depreciation of family satisfaction, parental attachment and self-esteem.
The current study investigates the effect of biological birth order and psychological birth order on family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem. The result suggested that the biological birth order failed to predict the family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem of individuals. On the other hand, the psychological birth order was a more adequate predictor on family satisfaction, parental attachment, interpersonal dependency and self-esteem. Current result indicated that over-attention in parenting could lead to child’s depreciation of family satisfaction, parental attachment and self-esteem.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2012.

The goal of this study was to understand the experiences of bisexual individuals in Hong Kong. A total number of 10 bisexual participants, aged between 21-28 years old, enrolled in this study where semi-structured interviews were conducted. This study adopted the grounded theory approach.
Results showed that bisexual individuals go through a 5-stage model of sexual identity formation, which include obliviousness, encountering critical incidents, recognizing dissonance, introspection, and transformation. Family, religious beliefs, and social norms were found to be the most salient sexual stigmas in the Chinese society. The findings also demonstrated the sexual stigma in Chinese culture serves as an important element in affecting both one’s bisexual identity formation and psychological well-being. It is also suggested that the consistency of ABC model would be the indicator in assessing the bisexual individuals’ psychological well-being as well.
The findings urge counselors and psychotherapists to strive to improve their cultural competence, and hope to raise their awareness of the unique characteristics of bisexual individuals. This study also suggested a therapeutic approach for bisexual clients. It is suggested that therapeutic goals should shift from encouraging disclosure to addressing the concerns of concealment. The psychotherapists should pay more attention to the cultural related stigma in the specific Chinese context.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2013.

PSY 372: Research Project.

Objectives: A number of studies report cultural difference in humour styles. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether differing styles of humour may have effects on counselling processes. This paper addresses the styles of humour of counsellors who practice multicultural counselling. It aims to reveal the empirical relationship between humour styles and empathy. Further, this study investigates the effectiveness of using humour in counselling with clients of different presenting concerns.
Method: This study includes qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The participants of the mixed-methods study included clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, counselling psychologists, organizational psychologists and counsellors who practiced multicultural counselling in Hong Kong. The qualitative study comprised two focus groups of 14 participants in total, who were counselling psychologists or counsellors, to discuss the importance of humour in their multicultural counselling. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis. The quantitative study involved a total of 70 randomly chosen participants, who completed a questionnaire, which combined with two standardized instruments namely, the Humour Styles Questionnaire (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir, 2003) and the Davis' Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Frias-Navarro, 2009).
Results: Humour is effective in counselling. Participants in the focus groups reflect humor usage leading to a lightened mood, positive climate and relaxed atmosphere in counselling. In addition, affiliative humour and self-enhancing humour styles are more effective than self- defeating and aggressive humour in multicultural counselling. Lastly, those with empathic concern were more likely to use affiliative and self-enhancing humour and less likely to use aggressive humour. Those with personal distress tended to use self-defeating humour.
Conclusion: This study validated the view that the use of humour in counselling is effective. In multicultural counselling, one uses specific humour styles depending on the multicultural factors or background the client presents. Besides, humour is also used differently depending on the presenting concerns clients bring into counselling. Clients and counsellors both use humour in varying manners. The effectiveness of humour application is determined by whether humour is understood and received well by the other individual involved. As such, the appropriateness of the application of humour in multicultural counselling needs to be gauged prior to using it.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2013.

79 pages

Thesis (B.A.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2014.

Many researchers in the past decades had focused on sexually coupled relationships and had not looked into the relationships for singles, in terms of romantic relationships. Past researchers suggest it is important for individuals to be involved in intimate relationships. Attachment theory influenced adults’ expectations and behaviour in close relationships. “Triangular Theory of Love” explains love experiences in terms of three elements: Intimacy, Commitment & Passion. The perception of one’s relationship satisfaction is connected with how one experienced intimacy, passion and commitment. A person’s attachment style affects their perception of love. This suggests attachment styles have an effect on individual’s perception of elements of triangular theory of love (intimacy, passion and commitment), and relationship satisfaction. From the quantitative study, in terms of attachment styles, there was a statistically significant difference in the individuals with an avoidant attachment style between the two groups, romance and relationship virgin and a marginal statistically significant difference in the individuals with an anxious attachment style between the two groups, romance and relationship virgin. In addition, there is a marginal statistically significant difference in terms of the perception of ideal passion in their partners for the romance and the relationship virgin group. A qualitative study, a consecutive design, was used for the relationship virgin groups and discovered they have high perception of intimacy and commitment, as compared with passion. To conclude, there are significant differences found between the romance and the relationship virgin group, in terms of avoidant attachment style. A marginal statistically significant difference found between the romance and the relationship virgin group, in terms of anxious attachment style and ideal perception of passion. However, there are no significant differences found with the currently not in a relationship group, but have had relationship in the past.

Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Dept. of Counselling and Psychology.

Unpleasant romantic relationship terminations commonly lead to depressive responses or catastrophic interpretations, similar to those recognized in grief. The present research has a two-fold purpose: First, to identify the components of grief in subjects with recent histories of romantic relationship terminations, and second, based on the components identified, to construct a counselling model for people who experience unpleasant romantic relationship terminations. Fourteen key informant interviews, analyzed by a grounded theory framework, showed that the psychological responses appearing after a break-up formulated different emotional positions. These emotional positions, which included denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance, revolved around a classical stages-model of grief. From this, a new grief-counselling model named “Dynamic Positions of Grief” is enunciated in the present research. In order to enhance the dynamics within the emotional positions to reach the state of acceptance, putting experience into words became an essential mourning process for clients. Besides, the provision of acute empathic understandings and non-judgmental therapeutic alliance were central to the emergence of the above counselling model.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.) -- Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 2012.

Studies revealed big gap between high percentage of undergraduates with reported mental health difficulties (i.e. more than 20%; Wong, Cheung, Chan, Ma, & Wa Tang, 2006) and low utilization of free university counselling service (UCS) (i.e. 3.1%; Hong Kong Government, 2016). The present study measured the general mental health condition of full-time university students, their coping style, relevant stigma and help-seeking pattern within the conceptual framework of help-seeking proposed by Rickwood and Thomas (2012) and using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB; Ajzen, 1985). 110 full-time university students from 9 universities completed questionnaire during final examination period. The sample had mild depression and moderate anxiety as measured using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale; preferred selfcoping style like acceptance, planning, active coping, positive reframing, self-blame and self-distraction. Despite low stigma towards mental illness and towards seeking psychological help, the intention to seek help from UCS was still significantly lower than that from friends and other informal sources. Result from multiple linear regression revealed that attitude and subjective norm towards help-seeking as well as the stress severity significantly predicted intention to seek help from university counselling services. Promotion of mental health first-aid in campus is needed so peers know what to do and make proper referral to UCS when necessary. Future direction of research could be on the possibility to utilize peer supporters or mentors in the university’s counselling system.

59 pages

Although the association between aggression and problematic pornography use (PPU) is documented, the association between trait aggression and online form of PPU, and the role of Sexual-Aggressive Fulfilment Pornography Use Expectancy (SAF) and trait self-control in the relationship are understudied. The present study examines the psychological mechanisms of trait aggression associated to problematic online adult pornography use (POAPU). Two waves of data collection were conducted to test the associations cross-sectionally and longitudinally. 1986 Chinese and 1396 US, and 861 Chinese and 628 US valid responses on online questionnaires were received from online crowdsourcing platforms in November 2023, and November 2024. The results of Part 1 study revealed that SAF mediates the relationship between trait aggression and POAPU, while trait self-control moderates the relationship between trait aggression and SAF. A stronger mediation effect of SAF and the negative mediation effect of T1 SAF in the second part among the Chinese sample underscore significant cross-country differences in the development of POAPU. Furthermore, the results of Part 2 study showed significant mediation effect of T2 SAF and moderation effect of T1 trait self-control on the relationship between T1 trait aggression and T2 SAF among Chinese sample, and on the relationship between T1 trait aggression and T2 POAPU among US sample, suggesting the cross-country difference on the buffering effect of trait self-control. These findings illuminate the importance of cross-country sensitivity in understanding the associations among trait aggression, trait self-control, SAF, and POAPU, and relevant implications are discussed.

130 Pages

The purpose of the current study was to study the emotional expressivity as a moderator of the effect of locus of control on help-seeking attitudes in Asian and Western countries. 76 Asians and 69 Westerners participants completed the Inventory of Attitudes Toward Seeking Mental Health Services (IASMHS; Mackenzie et al., 2004), Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ; Gross and John, 1995), and Rotter’s Internal-External (I–E) Locus of Control Scale (Rotter, 1966) to measure their help-seeking attitudes, emotional expressivity, and locus of control respectively. The result showed that internal locus of control and negative emotional expressivity predicted help-seeking attitudes in both Asian and Western countries. Negative emotional expressivity and internal locus of control at the same time predicted help-seeking attitudes in both Asian countries and Western countries. The only difference is negative emotional expressivity negatively predicted positive help-seeking attitudes in Asian countries but positively predicted positive help-seeking attitudes in Western countries.

Hong Kong Shue Yan University. Dept. of Counselling and Psychology.

145 pages