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Article Excerpt
Two-hundred and four entering master's-level counseling students from 9 programs in 5 states participated in a study testing the only counseling-based wellness assessment measure, the Five Factor Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (J. E. Myers, R. M. Luecht, & T. J. Sweeney, 2004), for its relationship to 2 other constructs: psychological distress and social desirability. There was a statistically significant negative relationship between level of wellness and psychological distress; the relationship between level of wellness and social desirability was found to have no statistical significance; and there was a statistically significant negative relationship between level of social desirability and psychological distress. Implications for counselor education and clinical significance are included.
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Professional organizations representing the counseling profession (Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, 1995; Lawson & Venart, 2007), researchers (Myers, Mobley, & Booth, 2003; Roach, 2005), and other counseling leaders (Hill, 2004; Witmer & Young, 1996) have placed an emphasis on the personal development and wellness of counselor trainees. Bradley and Post (1991) suggested that without systematic procedures for evaluating and promoting wellness, counselor educators risked contributing to a workforce of impaired counselors. The problem of counselor trainee impairment has become well-documented in the literature (Emerson & Markos, 1996; Hazier & Kottler, 1996; Herlihy, 1996; Olsheski & Leech, 1996; Sheffield, 1998). Lumadue and Duffey (1999) and Wilkerson (2006) concluded that future research should be aimed at finding the benefits of using models of impairment prevention, establishing the effectiveness of specific aspects of such models, and conducting research on specific instruments used for assessment and evaluation of counselor trainees.
The only wellness instrument that is based on counseling theory is the Five Factor Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (5F-Wel; Myers, Luecht, & Sweeney, 2004). Previous research suggested that the instrument needed further validity testing relating it to other constructs (Farmer, 2005; Ferro, 2005; Vanderbleek, 2005), such as social desirability (Myers et al., 2003); the instrument's susceptibility to response bias (e.g., "faking good"; American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education, 1999); and the most common form of counselor impairment, psychological distress (Frame & Stevens-Smith, 1995; Gaubatz & Vera, 2002; Li, 2001; Olsheski & Leech, 1996; Sheffield, 1998). The American Counseling Association's (ACA; 2005) ACA Code of Ethics requires that counselors and counselors-in-training avoid providing services when their personal issues are likely to cause harm to clients (ACA, 2005). The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) requires accredited programs to "conduct a developmental, systematic assessment of each student's progress throughout the program, including consideration of the student's academic performance, professional development, and personal development" (Section VI, B). The Association for Counselor Education and Supervision's (1995) Ethical Guidelines for Counseling Supervisors suggest that "supervisors, through ongoing supervisee assessment and evaluation, should be aware of any personal or professional limitations of supervisees" (2.12). Yet, there is a lack of specific guidance from the profession's national organizations (i.e., those previously mentioned) pertaining to the selection, training, or monitoring of competent trainees (Wilkerson, 2006). Moreover, there is no mention of the potential use of instruments, strategies to assist colleagues or students with identifying signs of impairment, or strengths-based approaches for intervening (refer to specific documents previously listed).
In the following sections, we offer an overview of the validity and reliability of the 5F-Wel. Second, we review the 5F-Wel with reference to its clinical utility, including the importance of examining response bias. Then, we present the results of a study that addressed the need to establish the relationship of psychological distress and social desirability to the 5F-Wel. Finally, we present implications of this research for counselor education, the limitations of this study, and directions for research.
The 5F-Wel
The 5F-Wel is a tool designed to assess characteristics of wellness (Hattie, Myers, & Sweeney, 2004; Sweeney & Witmer, 1991; Witmer & Sweeney, 1992) and was developed from an evidence-based model, the Indivisible Self (IS-Wel; Myers & Sweeney, 2005a). The IS-Wel model of wellness emphasizes a holistic view of the person, including context that is recognized as having an effect on functioning. Wellness can be described as a series of choices in which mind, body, and spirit become integrated in one's experience and understanding of life. Living becomes an intentional lifestyle (way of being) focused on optimal functioning and living more fully (life goal).
Developed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis from an older version of the test, the Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (WEL; Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 1996), the 5F-Wel includes 73 items measuring Total Wellness, five second-order factors (Creative Self, Coping Self, Social Self, Essential Self, and Physical Sell), and 17 third-order factors, such as Nutrition, Spirituality, and Stress Management. Individual test items were shown to have statistically significant factor structure coefficients for the higher order Total Wellness factor (Myers & Sweeney, 2005a). Psychometric properties of the 5F-Wel were reported in the instrument's manual (Myers & Sweeney, 2005b). Cronbach's alpha coefficients were reported from a sample of 2,093 participants and found to have high internal consistency: Total Wellness (.90), Creative Self (.92), Coping Self (.85), Social Self (.85), Essential Self (.88), and Physical Self (.88; Hattie et al., 2004). Norms for the adult version of the 5F-Wel were based on 1,899 persons recruited through university classes, professional workshops, and research projects. Scores for all of the scales range from 1 to 100, with 100 indicating the highest level possible (Myers & Sweeney, 2005b).
In Buros's Mental Measurements Yearbook, reviewers of the WEL, Farmer (2005) and Ferro (2005), mentioned the need to improve the validity of the instrument, indicating both the need for improvement in construct validity and for independent tests of the validity of the instrument. Despite concerns related to the validity, Degges-White, Myers, Adelman, and Pastoor (2003), Granello (2000), Myers and Sweeney...
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