| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 心理學系 === 104 === Background & Aim: Researchers have found that self-report explicit inventories used to assess anxiety, depression or experiential avoidance are not accurate enough, especially in the Eastern culture. The possible reasons might be participants’ social desirability responding, impression management, etc. Some researchers tried to solve these problems by Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP; Barnes-Holmes et al., 2006). IRAP is an implicit measure instrument. Participants need to press the bottom correctly and quickly. Implicit attitudes and beliefs about emotional coping can be measured by this procedure. Culture and local language are important factors in IRAP. However, it has just a few researches of IRAP in Taiwan or mainland China. It is necessary to develop IRAP in accordance to Chinese culture and language. Thus, the purpose of this research is to develop Taiwanese college students’ anxiety/depression Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (anxiety/depression IRAP) and to test the reliability and validity of the instrument.
Methods: In the preparatory study, the most commonly used Chinese words for anxiety/depression were chosen as target stimuli. Words for emotional coping strategies were chosen as label stimuli in the anxiety/depression IRAP. The formal study recruited 182 college students. They administered the anxiety/depression IRAP and filled out explicit measures including State-Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI-S), Tung’s Depression Inventory for College Students (TDICS) and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ). The Q1 and Q3 of STAI-S Z-scores and the TDICS Z-score was chosen as the criteria of IRAP. Data of 45 anxiety/depression participants and 45 low anxiety/depression participants were used for data analyses. Each participant’s anxiety/depression IRAP original reaction time was transformed to become a D-IRAP score. A 2 (high anxiety/depression group, low anxiety/depression group) × 4 (emotional coping types which include “experience-positive emotions”, “experience-negative emotions”, “eliminate-positive emotions” and “eliminate-negative emotions”) ANOVA was conducted.
Results: 1. Anxiety/depression IRAP’s internal consistency and criterion-related validity are adequate; 2. Participants in each group implicitly agree “accept positive emotions” and oppose “avoid positive emotions"; 3. Low anxiety/depression group accept the negative emotions, but not the high anxiety/depression group try harder to avoid and eliminate the negative emotions than the low anxiety/depression group.
Discussion: Both high and low anxiety/depression group implicit agree accept positive emotions. However, the D-IRAP average score of “experience-positive emotions” coping type in the high anxiety/depression group is significantly higher than low anxiety/depression group. Results show that high anxiety/depression individuals’ strength of implicit attitude about experience positive emotions is more intense. The “experience-positive emotions” coping type reflects a tendency of excessive pursuit of positive emotions, and results in paradoxical effect (Ford & Mauss, 2014). That is, the more people pursue positive emotions, the less likely they are to experience positive outcomes.
Conclusion: 1. The anxiety/depression IRAP, the Chinese version has adequate reliability and validity. That is, it is an effective implicit measure for assessing college students’anxiety and depression. 2. The study provides (1) a more accurate stimulus material screening process; (2) and the criteria of accuracy, reaction time in the anxiety/depression IRAP, the Chinese version. 3. The anxiety/depression IRAP, the Chinese version can’t easily fake by participants. It can be used in the situation in which participants have social desirability responding, conceal the truth, or poor self-awareness.
Keywords: anxiety, depression, experiential avoidance, Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure
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