TPC-Journal-V4-Issue5

The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 5 537 While this study did not use qualitative measures as advocated by McCarthy (2012), females verbally disclosed that the school rarely offers them anger management services. Female participants further stated that if those services were more readily available, they would use them. Conversely, males indicated being overwhelmed with staff attempting to persuade them to participate in anger management services. This dichotomy in access to treatment clearly marks the identification of an underserved population. Thus, the females’ higher responsiveness to the intervention is potentially due to the following: Perhaps this study was a first intervention for many of the female participants. For females who did receive prior services, it may have been the first intervention directly dealing with anger. Day (2008) indicated three characteristics that clients need to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome: the client must be in distress, must actively seek help and must have high expectations for counseling. The female participants (as opposed to the majority of the males) in this study met the preceding three criteria. Members of both genders were in a state of distress (as evidenced by the school’s documentation system). However, females verbally admitted to wanting help and had higher expectations. Consequently, females in the pilot had larger, more consistent gains. As evidenced by West-Olatunji et al. (2010), when underserved populations receive desired treatments, the change is normally larger than average. Thus, the findings in this pilot study connect to previous research and provide a plausible reason for the differences between genders. Limitations This pilot study had limitations stemming from research methods. First, the groups were limited to one school, as well as to selection from a standardized school documentation system (Burt, 2010). The documentation system compiled an objective list of behavior issues in school, but did not differentiate between excessively angry and nonexcessively angry behaviors. For example, documented behaviors could range from threatening school staff to not returning school forms promptly. To account for this issue, this study included school staff and administration’s professional suggestions for possible candidates. However, school staff may have had subtle biases for or against certain students. There are limitations to each method of selection, including both the standardized documentation system and the school staff. An additional limitation is that the same mental health counselor (the author of this article) conducted the groups. Due to this limitation, some participants’ changes may be due to the facilitator’s style or personality. More importantly, this study lacked a control group and had a small number of participants. The lack of a control group makes generalizations difficult in that it is uncertain whether other extraneous variables influenced the results. Having a small number of participants decreases the power of the pilot study and makes it difficult to generalize results. However, the fact that a significant finding occurred with a small sample size indicates the strong influence of the intervention (Gay & Airasian, 2003). In schools, it is difficult to conduct full-scale studies due to a number of preexisting conditions, such as high-stakes testing (Burt et al., 2013). Therefore, having a study without a control group and with a small number of participants may be the most appropriate method if investigators are to conduct research in schools (Heppner et al., 2008). Implications and Future Directions for Research Implications for mental health counselors stemming from this pilot study are numerous. First, mental health counselors must be aware that both genders need services for excessive anger. Mental health counselors should not allow personal biases and media influences to sway professional opinion (Gladding, 2012). In addition, mental health counselors must advocate for fairness and oppose stereotyped biases and ideologies pushed by society (Burt et al., 2012). According to Gray and Rose (2012), discrimination and internalized oppression begin by ignoring discriminatory societal practices. Only by remaining reflective and cognizant of personal