Clinical helping towards clients diagnosed with a personality disorder who display difficult and challenging behaviour

Cognition-Emotion-Action model (1980) with Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour ABSTRACT (TpB, 1991) towards understanding helping behaviour of clinical staff who work with clients diagnosed with a personality disorder (PD) who display difficult and challenging behaviour. Design: This is a quantitative study making use of a single group cross-sectional regression design. A regression analysis was used to examine the predictive ability of the primary constructs within the TpB against the constructs of attribution and emotion from Weiner's (1980) model to explain staff helping behaviour. Method: Ninety three clinical staff from all professions took part in a short semi- structured interview regarding an incident of difficult behaviour they had recently experienced involving a client diagnosed with a PD. Participants then completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire Revised (ASQ-R), the Emotional Reactions to Challenging Behaviour scale (ERCB), the Generalised Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE), the Helping Behaviour Questionnaire (HBQ) and two bipolar scales for helping and severity of challenging behaviour. Results: The constructs within the TpB adequately predicted staff helping behaviour, with attitude and perceived control being significant determinants of intention and perceived control and intention significantly predicting helping behaviour. Subjective norm was non-significant in predicting intention. Weiner's (1980) model was also found to significantly predict helping behaviour with controllability being the only significant determinant of helping behaviour. A combination of the TpB and Weiner's model was found to account for greater variance in helping behaviour than the individual models.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo