Instrument development: Practitioner fear of youthful clients: An instrument development and validation study

The study discussed in this article describes the development of a questionnaire for evaluating the nature and extent of practitioners' fears in working with high-risk youths. Three scales were proposed. A stepwise approach to test construction and validation was used. Phase 1 (item generation) and 2 (item refinement and selection) generated 42 test items related to the three proposed subscales. In phase 3, items were administered to 248 practitioners who worked with at-risk youths. Exploratory factor analysis indicated the presence of four factors accounting for 41 percent of the variance. Predicted relationships between subscales were confirmed, supporting the validity of the questionnaire. Internal consistency ranged from moderate to high. Practice implications of the questionnaire are discussed. Key words: fears; high-risk youths; instrument development; practitioners Research has indicated that juvenile violent crime has increased substantially since the mid-to-late eighties (Poe-Yamagata & Butts, 1996; Snyder, 1999) and has suggested that programs and organizations serving youths have struggled to respond effectively to escalating behavior problems among young people (Penzerro & Lein, 1995; Shamsie, Sykes, & Hamilton, 1994; Small, Kennedy, & Bender, 1991). Although there have been various responses in the literature to increasing behavior problems among youths and the perceived ineffectiveness of interventions, little research has focused on the effect of these phenomena on the emotions and behaviors of practitioners who work with young clients. Fear is one emotion recently identified by practitioners resulting from their work with aggressive youths (Okamoto, 2001). Anecdotally, practitioners have long acknowledged the presence of fear in their practices with high-risk youths, and conceptually, some literature has addressed the types of fears that these practitioners experience in their work (Braxton, 1995; Ricks, 1997). To date, however, no known empirical study on the types of youth practitioners' fears exists, and no known measurement tool has been developed to evaluate their fears. The purpose of the study discussed in this article was to describe the initial development and validation of a questionnaire focused on practitioners' fears in working with high-risk youths in the agency setting. As part of the validation process, this study also examined the responses to two open-ended questions focused on practitioners' fears. LITERATURE ON PRACTITIONERS' FEARS Several empirical studies have attempted to examine the presence of practitioners' fears. Pope and Tabachnick (1993) examined the frequency of practitioners' experience of four common feelings--anger, hate, fear, and sexual attraction or arousal--toward their adult clients. Using a questionnaire mailed to a national sample of psychologists, they found that each of these emotions was experienced by over 80 percent of respondents. Psychologists in this study reported experiencing various tEar-related incidents and situations. Similarly, Pluchik, Conte, and Karasu (1994) identified therapists' fear through a nationally distributed questionnaire examining critical incidents occurring in psychotherapy. Most recently, Okamoto (2001) used semi-structured interviews of youth practitioners and observations of a collaborative event in a juvenile prison to explore practitioners' fears in private and state-funded agencies that served youths. Although some studies have identified practitioners' unique manifestations of fear in working with high-risk clients (for example, fear of financial loss, fear of closeness; Pluchik et al., 1994), a close review of the body of literature on practitioners' fear suggests the presence of three primary types--fear of being physically harmed by clients, fear of litigation, and fear of being labeled "incompetent" by colleagues and superiors. Fear of Physical Harm Most of the literature on therapists' and practitioners' fears is focused on their fear of being physically harmed by clients. …