Date of Award

7-1-1968

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

Abstract

The Problem This study sought to answer some questions about the inter-personal relationship between the counselor and client in a university counseling center. The research questions were: Do male clients require different levels of counselor empathy, respect and genuineness from female clients? Are different levels of the counselor-offered therapeutic conditions required for different types of problems? Do the counselor-offered conditions help promote conditions conducive to constructive change in clien il

Procedure The clients in this study were twenty-seven male and twenty-seven female students at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The counselors were nine male doctoral interns at the Counseling Center of the University of North Dakota.

fbne male clients and nine female clients were assigned to each of three problem categories (educational, vocational and personal social) . Counselors were assigned by a senior staff member of the Counseling Center following an intake interview. The first interview with the counselor, called the counseling treatment, was cape-recorded. A four-minute random segment from each third of each counseling treatment was re-recorded on separate tapes. .hree judges rated the tape-recorded segments for counselor empathy, respect and genuineness and three different judges rated client self-exploration .

The counselor variables were measured with rating scales developed by Carkhuff to determine the levels of empathy, respect and genuineness offered by the counselor. The level of self-exploration was determined by the Truax Depth of Self- Exploration Scale.

To appraise the quality of the relationship as perceived by the clients, each client was asked to complete the Counselor Evaluation Inventory-Short Form (CEI-SF) developed by Linden, Stone and Shertzer.

The statistical procedures used were Fisher's F, I Fisher's t, Scheffe's S-test and Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient. The .05 level of significance was re- f quired for each analysis except for Scheffe's test which employed the .10 level of significance.

Results Enumerated below are the findings which emerged from the present investigation: 1. There were no significant differences in the levels of empathy, respect and genuineness offered to male and female clients. 2. There was significantly greater depth of self-exploration for female clients than for male clients. 3. There was no significant iifference in the quality of the relationship as perceived by male and female clients. 4. There were no significant differences in the levels of empathy, respect and genuineness offered to clients with different types of problems. 5. There was no significant difference in the levels of self-exploration for male clients with different types of problems. 6. There was significantly greater self-exploration in the personal social area for female clients than for either the vocational or educational areas. 7. There was no significant difference in the quality of the relationship as perceived by clients with different types of problems. 8. There were significant relationships between the counselor variables and self-exploration for male and female clients with vocational, educational and personal social problems with cne exception. There was a non-significant relationship between genuineness and self-exploration for female clients with educational problems. S. There were non-significant relationships between the counselor variables and the quality of the counselor-client relationship as perceived by the clients.

Conclusions The conclusions were: 1. The significantly deeper self-exploration for females dees not appear to be due to a corresponding increase in the levels of the therapeutic conditions. Thus, the results suggested that male clients require higher levels of the therapeutic ingredients for self-exploration than do female clients. 2. Some alternative explanations were offered for the question of whether different levels of the counselor characteristics are required for different types of problems. 3. It was concluded that counselor empathy, respect and genuineness are related to self-exploration for university clients with educational, vocational and personal social problems.

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