I intend to examine the possibility of learned helplessness in patients. I would like to know the process of evaluating this behaviour in patients and what scales I should use?
I think this is a very clever idea, and you may make some interesting and useful discoveries if you pursue this line of inquiry. I can only offer a little help, but here it is:
Learned helplessness was first identified and studied by Martin Seligman. He is still around, and I will include contact information here. Although he has mostly moved on to other topics, this work was the original foundation of his renown.
The early work on dogs generalized only moderately well to humans. It was suggested that this was because the purely behavioral approach Seligman's lab had taken failed to account for the importance of human cognition. That is, we try to understand and explain why things happened the way they did. It was proposed (I think by Abramson) that attributional style would mediate the effect of the classic learned helplessness paradigm. Only if a person makes global, stable, internal/personal attributions to adverse events will they show the learned helplessness effect. Therefore, they developed the Attributional Style Questionnaire. Seligman will make this available to you for a nominal fee.
The link below is to one part of Seligman's Positive Psychology Page. If you click around, you can find lots of relevant information including his address and phone number. The attached file is an article about the history of the learned helplessness construct, authored by Seligman, that appeared in Psychological Review.
I'm also attaching another measure that may be relevant to what you're trying to do.
Good luck!
https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/resources/questionnaires-researchers/attributional-style-questionnaire
Dear Professor Joy,
Thanks very much for your elaborate advice on how to pursue this subject matter. It will be a tough endeavour. I will contact Dr. Seligman and utilize all the information that you have provided me. Once again, my infinite thanks.
Good references up there. You may like to try contents on care and coping strategies such as Fitch, 2000 (The Supportive Care Needs Framework - SCNF) and The Utrecht Coping List Scales also Fitch (1994). I hope it works!
I found a copy of the original article describing the Attributional Style Questionnaire. It does include the items and rating scales, so you could reproduce it from here. I'm not sure whether it has been modified in the intervening years.
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