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COUN 500 RESEARCH PAPER INSTRUCTIONS Accessing the Liberty University’s Online Library, retrieve, download, and read at least 3 sources on one of the following topics. Keep in mind that at least 1 source needs to be from a professional journal and 1 source needs to be from a professional publication such as a textbook. • • • • • The differences between professional counseling and other mental health professions Professional counseling and social justice Characteristics of the effective counselor Counselor wellness and impairment Professional counselor credentialing Once the sources and topic are obtained, write a 5–6-page paper, (excluding tile page, abstract, and reference page) that is in current APA format and includes the following: • • • • • • • • • • • Title Page Abstract Introduction Body Conclusion References Save your paper as a Microsoft Word document, under your name and assignment title (Example: Doe_J_assignment_1). By 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Thursday of Module/Week 4, submit your essay through the SafeAssign link in the Assignments folder. The SafeAssign link is marked by a green check mark to its left and is titled “Research Paper DRAFT.” The green check mark indicates that your paper is being submitted to the SafeAssign program in order to check for plagiarism. Wait until the link indicates that SafeAssign has analyzed your paper and prepared a report. If you are uncertain about this step, see the presentation on SafeAssign in the Reading & Study folder of Module/Week 4. Open the SafeAssign report and examine it. Again, if you are uncertain, see the directions on using SafeAssign referenced above. The goal is to reach a similarity index of less than 25%. If you receive an index greater than 25%, you have unintentionally plagiarized. Rework your paper until you get a similarity index less than 25%. Submit the final essay using the second assignment link, titled the same as the above link but with a different symbol to its left. Submit this assignment by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday of Module/Week 4. Journal of Counseling Psychology 1971. Vol. 18, No. 3, 249-254 Effective Counselor: Characteristics and Attitudes! MOZELLE JACKSON Northern Illinois University AND CHARLES L. THOMPSON* University of Tennessee Seventy-three National Defense Education Act trained school counselors, differentiated according to sex and counselor effectiveness, were studied for differences on cognitive flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, and attitudes toward self, most people, most clients, and counseling. All of the counselors were similar in cognitive flexibility and tolerance of ambiguity, but the most effective counselors were more positive in their counseling-related attitudes than the least effective counselors. Both effective and least effective female counselors were more positive than male counselors toward counseling-related attitudes. Attitudes toward most people, most clients, and counseling differentiated the two counselor effectiveness groups and male and female counselors. During the past decade, hundreds of trainees have been selected for National Defense Education Act (NDEA) and Education Professions Development Act (EPDA) Counselor Training Programs. Yet, criteria for selection to these programs have gained little in validity and consensus. Research measuring counselor effectiveness is, at best, equivocal. McDaniel (1967), Rogers (1963), and Whiteley, Sprinthal, Mosher, and Donaghy (1967) have pointed out the critical problem of counselor selection that results from a lack of consensus on what constitutes the effective counselor. Humanistic therapists equate counselor effectiveness with accurate empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard (Blocher, 1966; Patterson, 1968; Rogers, 1963; Truax, 1963). On the other hand, behavior therapists, while not denying the importance of the counseling relationship, emphasize specific reinforcement techniques as being associated with effective counseling (Krasner & Ullman, 196S; Krumboltz, 196S; Sapolsky, 1960; Wolpe, 1958). A third point of view advocates cognitive flexibility (Whiteley et al., 1967) and tolerance of ambiguity (Brams, 1961; Gruberg, 1967; and McDaniel, 1 Requests for reprints should be sent to Charles L. Thompson, Department of Educational Psychology and Guidance, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916. 249 1967) as important characteristics of effective counselors. Therefore, the present study was directed toward the resolution of some of the conflicts surrounding the data on counselor effectiveness. More specifically, the study was an assessment of differences between rated effective and ineffective counselors on cognitive flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, and attitudes toward self, most people, most clients, and counseling. It was predicted that (a) counselors rated high on effectiveness would be more cognitively flexible, tolerant of ambiguity, and have more positive attitudes toward self, most people, most clients, and counseling, than those counselors rated low by their practicum supervisors; and (b) sex of the counselor would not be a significant factor when these variables were considered. METHOD Most studies on counselor effectiveness have observed students rather than trained, on-the-job counselors (Patterson, 1968); therefore, the present study was conducted with counselors from five former NDEA guidance institutes at the University of Tennessee. During four summer sessions (1964-1967), counselors spent 35-50 hours in counseling practicum, and those in the (1964) year-long institute between 50-60. Videotapes and audiotapes of the counseling sessions were analyzed by supervisors on the counselor education staff. Supervisors knew the work of each counselor quite well, since the supervisory load 250 Mozelle Jackson and Charles L. Thompson consisted of only six counselor trainees. Overall ratings of "excellent," "average," and "poor" based on performance in face-to-face counseling situations were designated for each counselor at the end of institute training periods. The criteria for judging a counselor was evidence of client movement toward self-understanding, self-acceptance, skills in satisfying needs, decision-making skills, and specific goal attainment. In particular, the counselor was rated on behaviors such as the following: (a) establishment of a relationship in which the client felt safe to explore a wide range of concerns, (6) demonstration of sensitivity to inner experiences of the client, (c) confrontations of whatever was important to the ch'ent without being threatened by it, and (d) focus of the interview on matters of real concern to the client. The counselors receiving ratings of "excellent" were denned as the most effective group and those receiving "poor" ratings the least effective group. Similarity of criteria used by counseling supervisors in rating counseling effectiveness for the five institute training periods was maintatined in an ongoing research program by McClain (1968). Validity of the counseling effectiveness ratings was substantiated by scores made by the counselors on the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF; Tatsuoka, 1968). Counselors in the "excellent" group scored two standard deviations higher than their counterparts in the "poor" groups on traits identified with effective counselors: warm, serious, venturesome, realistic, trusting, analytical, and relaxed. Tatsuoka (1968) reported results from multipleregression equations for predicting counselor effectiveness from 16 PF scores. Computations were based on the point-biserial coefficients of correlation between 16 PF scores and membership in groups rated excellent and poor. The average group's mean efficiency score on the 16 PF fell midway between those of the excellent and poor groups. The projected scores of the average group constituted a partial cross-validation of the regression equations, since data from the average group played no role in the construction of the regression equations. Tatsuoka (1968), therefore, concluded that ". . . the supervisors who rated counselors for McClain's study did a very creditable job [p. 1]." The range in time since training varied from 1 to 5 years for the counselors. Research indicates that change during training is minimal, and changes that do occur among trainees are not persistent; also, students tend to revert to their former attitudes (Hunger, Brown, & Needham 1964; Patterson, 1968; Rochester, 1967). It was, therefore, assumed that the counselors' behavior and attitudes remained somewhat constant in the time elapsing between their ratings of effectiveness (1963-67) and the testing period (fall 1968). Seventy-three counselors (45 males and 28 females participated in the study by completing and returning the materials via the mail. The most effective group contained 39 counselors (23 men and 16 women), and the least effective group contained 34 counselors (22 men and 12 women). Two case episodes utilized by Whiteley et al. (1967), were used to measure cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility, as defined by Whiteley et al. (1967), referred to open-mindedness, adaptability, and a resistance to premature closure in perception and cognition. More specifically as related to the counselor, cognitive flexibility is the ability of the counselor to respond easily to the content of what the client says and to his feeling. The counselor can answer questions that are necessary and yet keep the counseling dialogue open for additional exploration by the client. Flexibility implies setting a balance between excessive structuring in the counseling situation and the complete ambiguity of nondirection. Four counselors on the staff of the Student Counseling Center at the University of Tennessee were trained to rate responses to the case episodes according to the scoring system developed by Whiteley et al. (1967). Cognitive flexibility scores were based on the ratings on a 7-point scale that ranged from a score of 1 for flexible to 7 for rigid. Hanson's (1964) modified version of Budner's Intolerance-Tolerance for Ambiguity Scale was used to measure the counselors' tolerance for ambiguity. Tolerance of ambiguity was defined as a tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as desirable. Ambiguous situations are characterized by novelty, complexity, or insolubility and cannot be adequately structured or categorized by the individual because of the lack of sufficient cues (Budner, 1962). Scores for the 7-point, intolerance-tolerance of ambiguity scale (a Likert-type scale) ranged from 16 to 112. Budner's eight positively worded and eight negatively worded statements were utilized in the study. Positive items received scores ranging from seven for strong agreement to one for strong disagreement with negative items scored in the reverse. The semantic differential (Osgood et al,, 1957) was used to measure counseling-related attitudes and contained 12, 7-point, bi-polar adjectives alternated in order and polarity. The counselors rated their own attitudes on seven concepts: myself as I am now, myself in most situations, myself as a counselor, most people, most clients, counseling, and my purposes as a counselor. The concepts utilized in the semantic differential were adapted from a report on counselor effectiveness by Combs and Soper (1963). RESULTS Interrater reliability calculated for the two case episodes for cognitive flexibility showed 18 of 28 Spearman rank-order coefficients of correlation to be significant at or beyond the .OS level of confidence. When the Spearman coefficients were averaged in order to obtain Kendall's coefficient of concordance for inter- Effective rater reliability on each case, the results were: .45 for the case of John; .56 for the case of David; .40 between cases; and .50 for both cases. All of the coefficients were significant at the .001 level of confidence, which was determined by a formula for large samples (Siegel, 1956). Results of a 2 X 2 X 2 analysis of variance of the cognitive flexibility scores indicated no significant differences between the counselor groups on the cases, but the two case episodes were significantly different from each other (p < .01). All of the counselors were similar on cognitive flexibility; however, they were more cognitively flexible on the case of David than on the case of John (see Table 1). Neither counselor effectiveness nor the sex of the counselor accounted for the variance in a two-way analysis of the tolerance of ambiguity scores. The most and least effective counselors and the men and women counselors tended to score similarly on tolerance of ambiguity (see Table 2). However, the mean scores showed that the men scored slightly higher than the women. In a 2 X 2 X 7 analysis of variance of the attitude scores, significant F ratios obtained for counselor effectiveness, counselor sex, and concepts indicated the three major sources of variances between groups (/>
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