Donald W. Stewart

Social Phobia in College Students

Abstract We used the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) to identify self-reported social phobia symptoms in 59 students presenting for intake at our counseling center and 119 students meeting a course requirement for research participation. We expected that students presenting for clinical service would have higher scores than the students not seeking such service. Interestingly, students in both samples scored in the clinical range on the SPIN, suggesting there was no difference in mean levels of self-reported social phobia symptoms between the two groups. We interpreted this finding from a developmental perspective that “de-pathologizes” the symptoms of social anxiety and reframes them within an emerging identity context. Implications for intervention and programming for social phobia on campus are discussed, including recommendations to increase the utility of the SPIN with a college population.

A Rating System for Lucid Dream Content

Retrospective dream reports from 179 undergraduate students were scored by two independent raters in an attempt to assess the reliability of a newly-developed rating system for lucid dream content. The weighted Kappa statistic, which provides an index of chance-corrected interrater agreement for qualitative data, was used to assess the reliability of the ratings. The results indicated that the lucid dream rating system could be reliably used to identify different types of lucid dream content in dream reports, but some categories were less efficacious than others. Suggested revisions to the rating system are discussed.