University of Iowa

My name is Scot Boespflug, and I am a PhD student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Iowa. I am condcuting my doctoral research, investigating the professional psychological help seeking behaviors of MBA students at the University of Iowa. Participants will be responding to several surveys I will be constructing with the use of QuestionPro.com

Attitudes of Future Male Business Managers Towards Seeking Psychotherapy
Scot Boespflug
University of Iowa

The purpose of this study is to explore male Masters of Business Administration (MBA) students' willingness to seek professional psychological assistance, either via traditional psychotherapy or executive coaching. It also aims to explore male MBA students'experience of depression. The relationship between the participants' Gender Role Conflict (GRC) and attitudes towards help seeking will be directly analyzed. In addition, participants' level of current depressive symptoms will be analyzed (using the Beck Depression Inventory, BDI-II) in efforts to determine whether managers-in-training experience a high level of depression. To date, empirical studies examining executives'or future male executives' attitudes toward professional help seeking are lacking. Perhaps the results of this study can contribute to our understanding of men's help seeking behaviors.
Hypotheses propose that:
1) GRC scores on each of the four subscales - SPC - Success, Power, and Competition , RE - Restricted Emotionality , RABBM - Restricted Affectionate Behavior Between Men and CBWFR - Conflict Between Work and Family Relations will be predictor variables for the criterion variable of Standard Help Seeking (SHS).
2) GRC scores on each of the four subscales will be predictor variables for the criterion variable of the Executive Coaching Help Seeking (ECHS).
3) GRC subscale scores will be predictor variables for the criterior variable of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) scores.
and 4) ECHS will be negatively correlated with SHS scores.
Participants will consist of at least 100 men and 50 women enrolled in a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program at the University of Iowa.