Meichenbaum (1996)

Aims

To see if cognitive therapy sessions aimed at enabling people to identify their stressors and change their mental processes when under stress – SIT – work better than strategies simply aimed at changing their behaviour.

Procedures

Field experiment – 21 students = 17 to 25 responded to advert about treatment of test anxiety.

Matched pairs design in three groups:

• Group 1 – received SIT, 8 sessions giving insights into their thoughts before tests. Given positive statements and relaxation techniques to use.
• Group 2 – received standard desensitisation with no cognitive element, 8 sessions with progressive relaxation training.
• Group 3 – control group

Tested using a test anxiety questionnaire.

IQ test as baseline score and tested again after interventions.

 Findings

• Performance in SIT group improved the most.
• Both therapy groups showed improvement over the control group.
• SIT group reported the most improvement in anxiety level.
• Both therapy groups showed overall improvement.

Conclusions

SIT is an effective way of reducing anxiety in students who are prone to anxiety in test situations and is more effective then behavioural techniques such as systematic desensitization as it adds a cognitive element to the therapy.

Strengths:

• Real world application – it was a field experiment, meaning that the participants were behaving naturally in the natural environment. Also, they were volunteer participants, meaning that experimenter bias could affect the study.
• Usefulness – the results and conclusions show that SIT is the more effective way of treating anxiety in students.
• Matched pair design – order effects and extraneous variable were controlled, which increases the validity as it was SIT that improved their performance.

Weaknesses;

• Practicality – the therapy can be expensive, it takes up a lot of time and it needs to be applied in order to make it work. 
• Difficulties – changing cognitions and behaviours is difficult if they are based on well established habits.
• Ungenerisability – the sample only included 21 people, who were students, meaning that the results cannot be generalised due to ethnocentric bias and a small sample.