The effects of expressive writing on stress, mood, and perception of self-efficacy and of instructor

The purpose of this study was to determine if emotional disclosure through expressive writing would have an effect on stress, mood, self-efficacy, and perception of instructor in a population of undergraduate human services students. This study used a randomized control-group pretest-posttest design with three experimental conditions. There were 32 participants with (N = 10) emotional disclosure group, (N = 11) factual disclosure group, and (N = 11) the control group. The study was conducted over three consecutive days following a variation of Pennebaker's (1986) expressive writing protocol. Study measures and writing samples were collected via a web-based interface. The data were analyzed using paired t-tests and a series of one-way Analysis of Variance for within group pretest differences on the study measures and Analysis of Covariance for the between group differences on the posttest measures with the pretest scores as the covariate. Within group, comparisons were conducted to evaluate if there was a significant difference between the pre-test and posttest scores on the dependent variables stress, mood, self-efficacy, and perception of instructor within each experimental group. The results of the paired t-test indicate there was no significant difference among the three groups on the pretest and posttest measures on the dependent variables. Between group comparisons were conducted to determine if there was a difference among the experimental groups on the mean scores of the pretest. No significant difference was found on the pretest measures of stress, mood, and perception of instructor. However, there was a significant difference on the pretest measure of self-efficacy. The post hoc analyses indicate that the significant difference was between the factual disclosure group and the control group. Finally, a series of ANCOVAS were conducted to explore the effect of expressive writing on the posttest scores of the dependent variables stress, mood, self-efficacy, and perception of instructor, while controlling for the pretest scores. The pretest scores were used as covariates in the analysis. The results of the ANCOVAS indicate there was no significant difference among the three groups on the posttest scores on the dependent variables stress, mood, self-efficacy, and perception of instructor.