Date of Award

5-1989

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the perceptions of students training to be counselors, clinical psychologists, and social workers, regarding the professional titles of counseling psychologist, psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, and social worker. A videotaped counseling session of a therapist and a client, a client description, and a therapist description served as the stimuli. The professional title of the therapist varied in the therapist description and served as the independent variable. One hundred three subjects were grouped according to their training program and then randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups differentiated by the professional titles of counseling psychologist, psychiatrist, clinical psychologist and social worker. The dependent variable consisted of ratings of counseling performance obtained from the Counselor Evaluation Rating Scale (CERS) and the Counselor Rating Form (CRF), which contained three subscales. All subjects completed the dependent measures as well as a personal data form.

Significant main effect analyses indicated that on the CRF total scale and the CRF scale of expertness, clinical psychology students and social work students rated the therapist higher than did the counseling students. In addition, social work students rated the therapist as being significantly more attractive than did the counseling students. This study did not reveal any significant interactions between the student's training background and the professional title of the therapist. Even though there was no interaction with professional title, the results did indicate significant differences in the perceptions of therapist performance attributed to training background.

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