Student attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues: Analysis of self-talk categories

The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the utility of using tile thou ght-listing technique to examine participants' attitudes toward lesbian, ga y, and bisexual issues and (b) determine the effectiveness of two new train ing interventions (rational and experiential) that were designed using cogn itive-experiential st self-theory (Epstein, 1994). Fifty participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (rational training,e xperiential training, control group). Participants completed a thought-list ing technique before: and after receiving one of the theoretically based tr aining interventions. Three judges free sorted the 2,481 collected thoughts and identified and defined 25 thought categories. Three trained judges the n placed 2,246 (98%) of the thoughts into these categories. Results indicat ed that different categories of responses (cognitive, affective, behavioral ) emerged among the individuals which provided four distinct profiles of ho w people thought about the topic of homosexuality. Furthermore, chi-square analyses revealed that the experiential group had changes in their thoughts after receiving the workshop. Findings are discussed and suggestions for f uture research are provided. (C) 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.