Effects of Reciprocal Peer Counseling on College Student Personality Development

Abstract

Volunteer college students were trained to provide personal counseling for each other using a reciprocating “counselor-then-counselee” approach. Two different peer counseling approaches were compared with professional counseling and no counseling controls on the Personal Orientation Inventory, the FIRO-B, and two experimental scales assessing emotionality and sex-role behavior. From pre- to posttesting the counseled groups demonstrated significantly greater positive change than the controls on several variables, with the peer counseling groups showing greater gain than the professionally counseled. The approach is seen as effectively providing further movement along the dimension of de-professionalizing helping relations.     

Role Induction in Career Counseling

Many vocational psychologists advocate addressing career as well as personal concerns in career counseling. However, some clients may have inappropriate expectations toward career counseling and may not be prepared or want to discuss personal issues. This study examined whether perceptions of the career counseling process could be modified with the use of role induction. Results indicated that, whereas role induction was associated with perceptions of students' own career concerns, gender was a strong influence in perceptions of counseling overall and in the stigma associated with a holistic perspective on career counseling.     

Career Counseling and the Information Highway: Heeding the Road Signs

Traveling the “information highway” in the process of career counseling or providing career counseling services via the Internet pose additional challenges for counselors. In this article, the authors use current ethical guidelines to guide discussion of, and possible resolutions to, challenges posed by incorporating the Internet into career counseling.     

Creative Use of the Career Construction Interview

Designed as part of an individual career construction and life design counseling intervention, the Career Construction Interview (CCI) and My Career Story (MCS) workbook aid career counselors and other career service providers in helping clients construct, deconstruct, and reauthor their career stories. Recently, some career counselors have developed ways of using the CCI and the MCS in group settings. In this article, the author offers 3 additional ways to use the CCI and, thereby, add creativity to the career counseling process. These 3 ways include use of written exercises, career collages, and career portfolios. The article concludes with a call for career practitioners to continue to think creatively in using the CCI with clients.     

Counseling Men Confronted by Marital Separation

This research considers a counseling strategy for men facing the loss of their marital relationship. The researcher has found that such men are the focus of a significant part of the caseloads of counselors in the Family Court of Australia. At the time of separation these men see themselves as having little influence on their relationship continuing and they blame their wives and present as victims in an unfair system. They often are uneasy about participating in counseling. A counseling strategy using 'The Relationship Chart' process was investigated as a possible means of assisting such men to cope with such a major crisis in their lives. Ten men who had partictpated in this counseling process were followed up and their reactions and experiences of counseling are outlined and discussed in detail. Recommendations for further research into counseling men are presented.     

Creatively Labeling Behavior in Individual and Group Counseling

The authors make a case for the accurate labeling of behavior at the appropriate time in the counseling process and caution against the kind of labeling of a person which results in stereotyping and counseling ineffectiveness. They present a list of seven criteria to be considered if behavior is to be accurately labeled and advocate the use of metaphors, especially in group counseling, to label certain kinds of behavior     

C. H. Patterson on Client-Centered Career Counseling: An Interview

C. H. Patterson discusses career counseling as it can be accomplished within the client-centered approach. He notes the importance of the core conditions, the relationship of career counseling to therapy, the difficulty of counselor or therapist role change, the use of interpretation of tests, and the role of the client in the process. Included at the end of this article is a list of relevant publications authored by C. H. Patterson.     

Fair-Fight For Change: A Therapeutic Use of Aggressiveness in Couple Counseling*

Fair-fight-for-change is a technique in the creative use of aggression in marriage counseling as proposed by George R. Bach, PhD. Its purpose is to utilize anger constructively, teach communication skills, and produce behavior change. The author's use of this technique is presented step-by-step in a verbatim account of an actual counseling session that was also video-taped.     

The Use of the Computer in Counseling College Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of a computer program in helping clients clarify their concerns and identify goals for behavior change, prior to their first session counselor. A counseling treatment consisting of three initial computer-interaction sessions, followed by two sessions with a counselor, was compared to a treatment consisting of five sessions with a counselor and no computer interaction, and to a no-contact control group. Participants were 46 college students. The two treatment groups achieved their self-determined goals, as measured by the Goal Attainment Scale (Kiresuk & Sherman, 1968), and reported similar levels of satisfaction with counseling than students working with the computer-based counseling system. It was concluded that computers may be effectively used as part of the counseling process, allowing for a more efficient use of the counselor's time. However, more research is needed to identify the type of counselor intervention needed to facilitate the acceptance of these systems by students.     

Mental health services: use and disparity among diverse college students

OBJECTIVE: In this empirical study, the authors examined (1) actual use of counseling for emotional problems and (2) the assumptions that ethnicity, sex, social class, and psychological distress are associated with disparities in use of counseling. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were 1,773 diverse undergraduate students at an urban university. METHODS: The authors collected data via self-administered questionnaires between 1999 and 2005; they used a cross-sectional correlational research design, including analysis of variance statistical procedures. RESULTS: Students' level of counseling use (10%) was similar to that estimated for a national college sample. Students reporting higher levels of distress were more likely to use counseling; however, more than three-fourths of students who reported clinically significant levels of distress had not received counseling. CONCLUSIONS: The authors observed no disparities in use of mental health services in terms of sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.     

The Two Faces of Counseling: Or is it Three?

The nature of career counseling, counseling, and psychotherapy is considered, as is the use of the terms counseling and psychotherapy in the works of Carl Rogers as illustration of the cause of confusion in our terminology. It is suggested here that there are two kinds of counseling, situational and personal, and that these are not dichotomous but rather a continuum.     

Identification and Integration of Career Theory: Students’ Perspectives on the Process

In many counseling programs, while students are learning about career theory, they may be tasked in a separate course with identifying a theoretical approach to counseling. This may result in a dichotomous situation in which students lack an understanding of the relationship between career theory and counseling theory. Career counselors have long recognized the artificial distinction between career counseling and general counseling. However, counselor education programs generally lag, and there is a dearth of literature regarding the process of identifying and integrating career theory and counseling theory. This phenomenological study examined 6 students’ perceptions of the process of career theory identification and integration. Analysis of in‐depth interviews yielded 5 major themes: theory identification and integration, perceptions of career counseling, resources, personal dimensions, and application across the life span. Findings of this study have the potential to inform counselor education pedagogy regarding career theory identification and its application to the counseling context.     

Evaluating DISCOVER's Effectiveness in Enhancing College Students' Social Cognitive Career Development

College students (20 women, 14 men) seeking career counseling services at a university career center participated in this exploratory investigation. A 2 (DISCOVER treatment) × 2 (counseling treatment) research design was used to evaluate the individual and combined effects of DISCOVER (ACT, 1998) and counseling on participants' career decision‐making self‐efficacy and career decision‐making attributional style. Findings revealed a significant effect of the use of DISCOVER on participants' career decision‐making self‐efficacy and their sense of control over the career decision‐making process. Results are discussed regarding the implications for career counseling and ideas for further research in this domain.     

Negative Career Outlook and the Working Alliance in Career Counseling

The authors investigated 3 dimensions of the working alliance—goal, task, and bond—and the reduction of negative career‐related thoughts. A pretest–posttest design revealed a significant reduction in negative career thoughts after an initial career counseling interview was provided to college students (N = 87). Regression analyses revealed that task predicted negative career thoughts. The findings offer evidence of the effectiveness of career counseling and of the contribution of working alliance to counseling as a process and outcome variable.     

Reciprocity Counseling: Practice and Research*

This paper reviews the literature on reciprocity counseling. Evidence is presented for the usefulness of reciprocity counseling with young, well educated, white clients with slight to moderate marital distress. Research into the effectiveness of several components of reciprocity counseling including contracting, problem solving training and feedback is reviewed. Findings suggest that contracting alone is an important positive influence in increasing couples' reciprocating reinforcement. The impact of problem solving training is unclear. Sex of the therapist may influence husband and wife outcomes in problem solving training differentially. Couples' performance of problem-solving behavior appears to be under the control of other as yet unspecified variables. Feedback as a single treatment has unpredictable and sometimes negative results. Therefore use of feedback alone or without careful supervision appears questionable at this time. Issues raised for further research include use of token economies for more severely distressed couples, use of multiple therapists, and the development of a classification scheme for the severity of marital distress.     

Clinic-based service programs for increasing responsible sexual behavior

Three general classes of clinic-based programs to increase responsible sexual behavior are considered: (a) clinic-based educational/counseling programs, (b) school clinic-based condom distribution programs, and (c) clinic-based STD/HIV screening programs. Consistent condom use may double in response to clinic-based counseling. However, consistent use seldom exceeds 50% of coital exposures. Extensive and personalized counseling interventions reduce incident sexually transmitted infections by 5% to 10%. Increases in responsible sexual behavior following school-based condom distribution programs is reported in some but not in all studies. Screening programs for sexually transmitted infections are associated with decreases in rates of some infections. STD/HIV screening should be considered an important aspect of healthy sexuality and an adjunct to other counseling efforts.     

Constructivist Counseling for Career Indecision

Twentieth-century vocational guidance has been an objective enterprise in which counselors have studied and treated career indecision by abstracting and objectifying it. This article describes how the logical positivist perspective on indecision as an objective phenomenon has evolved over the course of this century. Then, the article explains how constructivist counselors view indecision as clients' subjective attempts to give meaning to crisis points in their lives. This view permits a conceptualization of career counseling as a process of articulating a client's life theme. The article concludes with a case study that illustrates a life-theme approach to counseling for career indecision.     

The Career Counseling Process With Racial-Ethnic Minorities: The Case of Asian Americans

Using Derald Sue's framework for examining the counseling process with racial-ethnic minority clients, the author develops a new model to examine the career counseling process with Asian Americans in terms of culturally appropriate and inappropriate process and outcomes. Recommendations for culturally appropriate career counseling interventions are also offered from this integrated framework.