226 The Professional Counselor | Volume 12, Issue 3 yoga, swimming, dance). There was no limit to the number of classes that participants could attend; however, attending at least one class each week was required for participation in the study. Readers can refer to Patterson et al. for more information about the group exercise programming. Neeru et al.’s (2015) deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation programming was used in the present study. Participants completed daily deep breathing and Jacobson Progressive Muscle Relaxation (JPMR). JPMR was selected because of its documented success with treating anxiety disorders (Neeru et al., 2015). Specifically, the program consisted of four deep breathing steps completed five times and JPMR for approximately 25 minutes daily. Participants attended a weekly deep breathing and JPMR session facilitated by a licensed professional counselor. Participants also practiced deep breathing and JPMR on their own daily and kept a log to document their practice sessions. Readers can refer to Neeru et al. for more information about JPMR and the deep breathing exercises. Measures Prospective participants read an informed consent statement and indicated their voluntary informed consent by clicking on a checkbox. Next, participants confirmed that they met the following inclusion criteria: (a) at least 18 years old and (b) currently enrolled in at least one undergraduate college class. The instrumentation began with demographic items regarding participants’ gender identity, ethnic identity, age, and confidential identification number to track their pretest and posttest scores. Lastly, participants completed a convergent validity measure (Mental Health Inventory – 5) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)-7 to measure the outcome variable (anxiety severity). Reliability and Validity Evidence of Test Scores Tests of internal consistency were computed to test the reliability of scores on the screening tool for appraising anxiety severity with undergraduate students in the present sample. For internal consistency reliability of scores, coefficient alpha (α) and coefficient omega (ω) were computed with the following minimum thresholds for adults’ scores on attitudinal measures: α > .70 and ω > .65, based on the recommendations of Kalkbrenner (2021b). The Mental Health Inventory–5. Participants completed the Mental Health Inventory (MHI)-5 to test the convergent validity of undergraduate students in the present samples’ scores on the GAD-7, which was used to measure the outcome variable in this study, anxiety severity. The MHI-5 is a 5-itemmeasure for appraising overall mental health (Berwick et al., 1991). Higher MHI-5 scores reflect better mental health. Participants responded to test items (example: “How much of the time, during the past month, have you been a very nervous person?”) on the following Likert-type scale: 0 = none of the time, 1 = a little of the time, 2 = some of the time, 3 = a good bit of the time, 4 = most of the time, or 5 = all of the time. The MHI-5 has particular utility as a convergent validity measure because of its brief nature (5 items) coupled with the myriad of support for its psychometric properties (e.g., Berwick et al., 1991; Rivera-Riquelme et al., 2019; Thorsen et al., 2013). As just a few examples, Rivera-Riquelme et al. (2019) found acceptable internal consistency reliability evidence (α = .71, ω = .78) and internal structure validity evidence of MHI-5 scores. In addition, the findings of Thorsen et al. (2013) demonstrated convergent validity evidence of MHI-5 scores. Findings in the extant literature (e.g., Foster et al., 2016; Vijayan & Joseph, 2015) established an inverse relationship between anxiety and mental health. Thus, a strong negative correlation (r > −.50; Sink & Stroh, 2006) between the MHI-5 and GAD-7 would support convergent validity evidence of scores. The Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7. The GAD-7 is a 7-item screening tool for appraising anxiety severity (Spitzer et al., 2006). Participants respond to test items based on the following prompt: “Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems?” and anchor definitions:
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