| The current study sought to investigate the impact of ambiguity and parent anxiety on treatment acceptability and retention of feedback utilizing an analog model. Participants were 202 parents of children between the ages of 2 and 14 years of age. Approximately half of the parents had a child diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum or other developmental disability while 40% were parents of typically developing children. The study was completed online using Qualtrics survey software and participants were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes presenting feedback from a hypothetical Autism Spectrum evaluation. Outcome measures were (1) parent anxiety, as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), (2) treatment acceptability, as measured by the Treatment Acceptability Questionnaire (TAQ; Krain, Kendall, & Power, 2005) and additional items, and (3) factual retention of feedback given. Ambiguity of Feedback was conceptualized as the scope of the interventions discussed (broad versus narrow) and the level of information provided (low versus high). Ambiguity of Diagnostic Label was operationalized as Autism (low Ambiguity) and Pervasive Developmental Disability - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS; high Ambiguity). It was hypothesized that greater ambiguity of feedback would be associated with lower treatment acceptability. Exploratory analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between ambiguity and parent anxiety on retention.;Treatment acceptability was highest for interventions that were explicitly recommended and simply mentioning an intervention, without providing an explanation or rationale, led to small increases in ratings of its acceptability. A main effect was noted for the impact of Trait Anxiety on Treatment Acceptability and among high but not low Trait anxious parents, lower Ambiguity of Diagnostic label was associated with greater Satisfaction. Thus, only partial support was found for the hypothesis that greater ambiguity would be associated with lower acceptability. No support was found for the hypothesis that Ambiguity of Feedback would impact retention however State Anxiety had a significant effect such that parents who endorsed greater State Anxiety, retained feedback more accurately than those who endorsed low State Anxiety. In a post-hoc analysis, the impact of Parent Concern was investigated and a significant interaction emerged for parents in the high but not low Concern group, suggesting a potentially important role for the saliency of the feedback in empirical investigations of psychodiagnostic feedback.;The current study represents the first empirical investigation of parent anxiety within the context of the feedback session and parents' retention of psychodiagnostic feedback. Results suggest that the way in which feedback is delivered may impact the acceptability of the treatment, specifically when high priority interventions are explicitly recommended, their acceptability is increased. Additionally, this study highlighted the potentially important role played by both State and Trait Anxiety within the feedback session. More research is needed however to understand the implications of the interaction effects that emerged. Several of the study variables represent very broad constructs thus future investigations in this line of research may consider utilizing more elaborate analog models to examine additional aspects of the underlying constructs. |
