In general, collected data consisted of measures of all subjects': (1) illness levels; (2) cohesiveness perceptions; and (3) perceptions of selected therapeutic factors established as associated with effective group therapy. So that findings relevant to the comparative analyses used to test hypotheses may be placed with the context of subjects' average levels of illness and perceptions, this section of the chapter presents descriptive statistics computed for each of the three measures.
The measure of subjects' degree of illness, The Karonofski Performance Status Scale, assessed illness along a scale from 0 (Dead) to 100 (Normal). In other words, the higher the score, the less symptomatic the ARC or AIDS patient.
In general, the average amount of illness score observed for the sample overall was 72.24 with a standard deviation of 15.30 points. The range spread over 40 points from 35 to 95. However, despite these statistics, the variance was actually not that high, this because computation of the mean and standard deviation was based on only a few people falling into the extreme ends of the distribution.
Specifically, findings showed that most subjects' amount of illness scores fell into the mid 70s (N=12=26.7% of the sample) or into the early 80s (N=14=31.1% of the sample). Indeed, the median score, which was 76, is perhaps the most accurate estimate of subjects' average illness levels. It can be noted that a score of 76 (also a score of 72) places the majority of subjects at Stage I. This is an illness state in which activities are primarily normal with minimal, if any, symptoms.
Five items were used to measure subjects' perceptions of group cohesiveness. Table 4 presents each item on the Group Cohesiveness Questionnaire, along with the mean and standard deviation observed for subjects' ratings of the degree to which they considered the item an apt characterization of their group.
As can be seen from observed me...