What Makes a Good Counselor - Assignment Example

of the paper: What makes a good counsellor an analysis of ways in which counselor trainers construe good and bad counseling trainees. Sue Wheeler Journal and Reference: Conselling Psychology Quarterly, vol.13, No.1, 2000,pp. 65-83. Introduction: Therapist is a person who guides his clients through his or her troubled times and promotes well-being. Vicious self-defeating tendencies in the person are minimized and ebullient fountain of positive spirit is made to flow freely. A shift in focus on to his positive qualities initiates transformation in his outlook and translates into proper action. Given such a context, certain desirable qualities are necessary in the therapists who take up the responsibility in transforming lives of others. Trainers of these would be therapists are on lookout for such desirable qualities in their trainees. To judge a trainee as competent, evidence is collected from trainer's own personal experience, case studies, observations from live recordings or live counseling sessions. Studies done in this area have found that positive outcomes in patients are related to efficacy of therapist with their patients more than their psychological symptoms. Some of the good qualities identified in the trainees were personal attributes such as warmth and positive regard for clients, cultivating hope, being non judgmental and accepting. Naturally a person who seeks help wants his therapist to be sensitive in understanding their suffering, being tolerant and alleviate distress at the earliest. Attempts have been made to objectify trainers subjective impressions about good and bad therapeutic qualities. Some of the observations made in this regard were 'openness to his own feelings concerning the process' related to 'effectiveness' and 'warmth' on one hand by humanistic school to 'psychological mindedness' expected by Psychoanalytic school. It has been observed that more than the theoretical orientation, personal qualities of therapists are related to efficacy and efficiency in therapies. Kelly believed that anticipation and prediction are the main drives of our mind. A person's unique psychological processes are characterized by the way he anticipates events. We build stereotypes about other people and also try to control them or impose on others our own themes so that we are better able to predict their actions. All these themes are built up for a system of constructs. A construct has two extreme poles such as Happy-sad and we tend to place people at either extreme or at some point in between. Repertory grid is based on personal construct psychology placing a particular characteristic on a dichotomy on in between. In the present study, the counsellor trainer's impression about their good and bad (not so good) students was worked out through repertory grid technique. Rationale: The research question posed in the present study were: In what ways do counselor trainees distinguish between good and bad counselor trainees Is there a difference between the way that trainers construe good and bad counselor trainees Methodology: The repertory grid is a two-dimensional matrix depicting relationship amongst a person's personal 'construct' and specific 'element'. An element denotes the person's things and events that together constitute an individual's environment. Construct denotes the dimensions or reference axes used by the individual to discriminate between elements. Triad or triangulation is the method wherein the respondent is asked to suggest ways in which two elements differ from the third. This generates a bipolar continuum. Sampling and Ethical Considerations: Expert counselor trainees in universities and colleges and voluntary organizations were invited to complete the grid.22 subjects totally completed the grids and biography data of 28 trainees who participated. No particular sampling method was followed hence it may be thought as purposive or convenience sampling. Since this is a voluntary participation by a group of experts eliciting their opinion about their trainees ethical considerations are not that important. Procedure for Repertory grid construction and data analysis along with results: Step 1:Trainers were asked to think about 5 good counseling students and 5 bad (Not so good) students. Elements: Names and initials entered into repertory grid as elements. Triangulated constructs. To look at three students. Ways in which two students are similar and the third different and at the end of the first row bipolar constructs were written. 10 such bipolar constructs were constructed in the 10 rows of the grid. Rating of elements: On a 5-point scale with a score of 5 being positive and 1 as negative.-refer to Fig. I Step 2: Categorization of constructs or conflated constructs: Two independent raters and the researcher participated in this . Conflation means combined into one. Constructs according to key word stems and agreed upon words referenced from thesaurus represented conflated constructs. Constructs were categorized. Agreement was reached on 22 conflated constructs. Grids were amended according to the agreed upon conflated constructs. Step 3: Descriptive data: Mean scores for the ratings for each of the five good students and for each of the 5 bad students for all the 22 conflated constructs in all the grids were calculated.-Fig II Total No: of constructs=262-- Reduced to 22 Conflated constructs- Categorized into 4 subgroups (Personality, Related to learning, Related to counsellor and other). Data Analysis: Fig III: Mean scores for the good and bad categories separately for each of the 22 conflated constructs calculated and the graph is displayed. Paired t-test for difference in the mean scores between good and bad categories for each of the conflated constructs showed statistically significant at probability level below 5%. Fig IV shows mean differences between good and bad scores and for each of the 22 conflated constructs along with maximum and minimum scores. Greatest mean difference was seen for the constructs of: Professional competence, Insight, commitment and receptiveness to feedback. Fig V : 3 Subgroups which contain conflated constructs and the greatest mean differences between good and bad categories for each of these 3 categories is projected. The greatest mean difference was noticed related to their performance as counselors. Step 4:Calculation of intensity scores: squaring correlation coefficients in a correlation matrix and multiplying by 100 and adding these products together. Intensity score indicates tightness of a construct. More the intensity higher he intensity score Intensity score was calculated all subjects. Tight construct a process of construing which leads to unvarying predictions, which means that we are pretty sure that a spade is a spade. We tighten our constructs so that we can look at the idea conceptually to see if it is as good as it looked when it flashed through our mind's eye. Loose construct leads to varying predictions. To construe loosely means placing an element at one pole of a construct today and on opposite side of the construct tomorrow. Changes from tight to loose construing and back again defines the creativity cycle.. Fig VI: Shows mean intensity scores of subgroups of trainers with different orientations. Persons trained in person centered therapies had highest intensity scores depicting tightness of their constructs in contrast to those with Psychodynamic orientation who had the least score indicating looseness or less intense scores. Step 5: Factor analysis of grids with Principal component analysis In a research where factor analysis is done, all variables are considered to be independent and correlate with an underlying component. If two or more items measure the same component, they are expected to have higher correlations with each other than other items. To proceed with factor analysis the first step would be to take measures of a large number of people on a set of items; a rule of thumb calls for at least 10 times as many subjects as items. The second step involves calculation of correlations. In the third step linear combination of correlated items is produced similar to a regression equation without a dependent variable. The first factor accounts for the most variation among the items, the second accounts for most of the residual variation after the first factor is taken into consideration and so forth. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation is one of the commonest method employed in factor analysis. Typically, a small number of factors account for enough of the variation among subjects among subjects that is possible to draw inferences about a subject's score on a given factor. Fourth step involves determining how many factors are needed and how they should be interpreted. Fig VII shows factor matrix for a subject where 84.5% of the variance is explained by one factor interpreted as tight construct, while I the Fig VIII the factor accounted for 46.5 % of variance and 23.1% and 14.4 5 respectively for second and third factors and this is interpreted as loose construct. If we examine the items in the second factor here item 'focused' appears to fit into the first factor but it has high correlation with second factor indicating its looseness. Fig IX is an example of 'loose' 'tight ' concept has a scatter of the items, which have assorted into the three factors. The interpretation and naming of the factors is based on experience and skill of the researcher in factor analysis. Therefore, the concepts like tightness or looseness in someway are subjective. Conclusions in this study: 1) The paper focuses on important aspects of who are the good candidates to be recruited into a course What items are to be incorporated in the assessment instruments Which area in a therapist training is important which has a direct bearing in good therapeutic outcome 2) In the paper being 'professionally competent' refers to good listening, tolerance to pain and emotional expression of others and perception of needs of others. These were followed by insight, commitment and reception to feedback. Being educated and knowledgeable follows suit after these essential items were present. Being human is more important than being knowledgeable in interpersonal relationships. 3)Trainers with Person centered approach had tight constructs in contrast to psychodynamically oriented, who had loose constructs implying a type of cognitive rigidity and stereotyping others . These candidates may appear as desirable candidates. 4) Can someone be trained to be more human or is it innate is a question generated in the research for future research. Training should overall promote self-development and self-confidence in trainees whatever the theoretical construct they are trained in. Comments and Conclusions about the paper along with limitations of the study: 1) The paper paves the way for understanding pre recruitment assessment of candidates who are likely to be good counselors in future. However, further studies are needed to be done to find out whether the items identified have predictive validity. 2) The main focus in this paper was on expert's impression about desirable qualities in trainees. In future research, trainees and client's perception of desirable qualities may be incorporated. 3) Repertory grid analysis is also employed in sociological , management and business research, so, it is a well accepted technique in objectifying subjective impressions. 4) Factor analysis done for each of the subjects on a grid is slightly confusing without observing the extent of variation on each of the conflated constructs. 5) The number of values for performing a paired t-test between Good and Bad trainees is small, whether they follow normal distribution or not has not been specified in the paper. Read More