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ABSTRACT
Understanding help-seeking intentions and behaviour is fundamental to the identification of factors that can be modified to increase engagement in counselling. Despite considerable research on these variables, integrating prior research has been impeded by a lack of consistent and psychometrically sound help-seeking measures. The General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) was developed to assess intentions to seek help from different sources and for different problems. Using a sample of 218 high school students, the GHSQ was found to have satisfactory reliability and validity, and appears to be a flexible measure of help-seeking intentions that can be applied to a range of contexts.
RÉSUMÉ
Il est important de comprendre les intentions de demande d'aide et leur comportement si on veut reconnaître les facteurs à modifier afin d'augmenter l'engagement dans la relation thérapeutique. Des recherches considérables ont été menées sur ces variables, mais elles n'ont pu être intégrées faute de mesures psychométriques homogènes et fiables pour les analyser. Le questionnaire général de demande d'aide (QGDA) a été mis au point pour évaluer les intentions de demande d'aide provenant de diverses sources et relatives à divers problèmes. Utilisant un échantillon de 218 étudiants d'écoles secondaires, le QGDA s'est avéré d'une fiabilité et d'une validité satisfaisantes, et semble constituer une mesure flexible des intentions de demandes d'aide pouvant s'appliquer à une variété de contextes.
Young people generally prefer the informal help of friends and family before the formal help of medical or psychological professionals when psychologically distressed (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Offer, Howard, Schonert, & Ostrov, 1991). Many young people indicate a preference for seeking help from "no one" for personal-emotional and suicidal problems (Deane, Wilson, & Ciarrochi, 2001). Although some consistent help-seeking patterns appear in studies of young people, there are also variations between studies. Due to different measurement strategies, it is difficult to know whether these differences are substantive or due to methodological variation. For example, reported rates for friends as the most preferred help source for personal-emotional problems vary by up to 67.2% (e.g., 21.1%, Boldero & Fallon; 88.3%, Offer et al.). Similarly, a 40% variation can be found in preference rates for parents (e.g., 19%, Boldero & Fallon; 59%, Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1995), and a 22% variation can be found in preference rates for...