Practicing counselors are often working in settings that do not include regularly-assigned supervisors. In the absence of regular supervision, today's counselors must meet mounting demands for accountability by demonstrating competence and expressing professional autonomy. When a difficult situation arises with a given client, what can and should…

The primary purpose of this paper is to apply the accountability concept to the field of counseling. (Author)

Previous studies have demonstrated the inability of naive observers (i.e., those who have no counseling training) to differentiate an empathic counselor from a content-only counselor on a variety of counselor rating scales. The present study extends these earlier studies by attempting to determine whether individuals who had been clients…

Conducted factor analytic investigation of Counselor Rating Form, Counselor Rating Form-Short Form, and Counselor Effectiveness Rating Scale (CERS) using data from 160 undergraduate students. Analysis revealed two oblique factors (expertness and attractiveness-trustworthiness), whereas CERS produced single, global evaluative factor. Oblique…

The seven studies reported in this paper represent successive attempts to explain the inability of observers to differentiate "good" counseling from "bad" counseling. Essentially, the researchers found that subjects, both undergraduate education majors and graduate counseling students, did not rate a videotaped counselor's performance as more…

The validity of six instruments designed to assess counselor effectiveness was studied. Four videotaped counselor role conditions were created. Participants, 160 undergraduates at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio), were asked to rate the counselors using each of the six commonly used instruments. Three were drawn from social influence theory:…

Since the vicarious participation analogue is frequently used to provide modeling of appropriate counselor skills to beginning counselor trainees, this model and its various forms are of particular relevance to counselor training. An investigation was designed to examine the effects of the level of the simulation of a counseling session upon…

The relative isolation of the elementary school counselor from other professional counselors is identified as a major supervisory difficulty. The potential of self-initiated supervision is offered as a reasonable method of dealing with such isolation. A list of possible self-supervisory activities is included to help counselors prevent burnout,…

Concurrent and construct validity of six instruments designed to assess counselor effectiveness was studied. Participants included 139, male and female, undergraduate general studies and education majors. Consistent with social influence theory, four videotaped counselor role conditions (non-expert, not-attractive, non-trustworthy, and…