TheProfessional Counselor-Vol12-Issue3

The Professional Counselor | Volume 12, Issue 3 225 approaches for anxiety reduction: a behavioral approach alone, a physiological approach alone, and a combined behavioral approach and physiological approach. I am in my late 30s and identify as a White man. I have a PhD in counselor education as well as an MS in clinical mental health counseling. I have a deep belief in and an active line of research on the utility of total wellness (combined mental and physical health). My research and clinical experience have informed my passion and interest in studying the utility of integrated physical and psychological health services. More specifically, my personal beliefs, values, and interest in total wellness influenced my decision to conduct the present study. I carefully followed the procedures outlined below to reduce the chances that my personal values biased the research design. Participants and Procedures Data collection began following approval from the IRB. Data were collected during the fall 2022 semester from undergraduate students who were at least 18 years or older and enrolled in at least one class at a land grant, research-intensive university located in the Southwestern United States. An a priori statistical power analysis was computed using G*Power (Faul et al., 2009). Results revealed that a sample size of at least 42 would provide an 80% power estimate, α = .05, with a moderate effect size, f = 0.25. I obtained an email list from the registrar’s office of all students enrolled in a section of a Career Excellence course, which was selected to recruit students in a variety of academic majors because all undergraduate students in the College of Education are required to take this course. The focus of this study (mental and physical wellness) was also consistent with the purpose of the course (success in college). A non-probability, convenience sampling procedure was employed by sending a recruitment message to students’ email addresses via the Qualtrics online survey platform. The response rate was approximately 15%, with a total of 222 prospective participants indicating their interest in the study by clicking on the electronic recruitment link, which automatically sent them an invitation to attend an information session about the study. One hundred forty-four students showed up for the information session, 129 of which provided their voluntary informed consent to enroll in the study. Participants were given a confidential identification number to track their pretest/posttest responses, and then they completed the pretest (see the Measures section below). Respondents were randomly assigned in equal groups to either (a) deep breathing with progressive muscle relaxation condition, (b) group exercise condition, or (c) both exercise and deep breathing with progressive muscle relaxation condition. A missing values analysis showed that less than 5% of data was missing for all cases. Expectation maximization was used to impute missing values, as Little’s Missing Completely at Random (MCAR) test revealed that the data could be treated as MCAR (p = .367). Data from five participants who did not return to complete the posttest at the end of the semester were removed, yielding a robust sample of N = 124. Participants (N = 124) ranged in age from 18 to 33 (M = 21.64, SD = 3.70). In terms of gender identity, 65.0% (n = 80) self-identified as female, 32.2% (n = 40) as male, 0.8% (n = 1) as transgender, and 2.4% (n = 3) did not specify their gender identity. For ethnic identity, 50.0% (n = 62) identified as White, 26.7% (n = 33) as Latinx, 12.1% (n = 15) as Asian, 9.6% (n = 12) as Black, 0.8% (n = 1) as Alaskan Native, and 0.8% (n = 1) did not specify their ethnic identity. In terms of generational status, 36.3% (n = 45) of participants were first-generation college students and 63.7% (n = 79) were second-generation or beyond. Group Exercise and Deep Breathing Programs I was awarded a small grant to offer on-campus deep breathing with progressive muscle relaxation and group exercise programs. The structure of the group exercise program was based on Patterson et al. (2021), which consisted of more than 50 available exercise classes each week (e.g., cycling,

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