Counseling Psychology

Mark M. Leach, Frederick T.L. Leong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351948258
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Psychology

Since its beginnings after WWII, Counseling Psychology has grown to become an applied specialty within psychology with unique areas of emphasis. This book introduces readers to the field by presenting its history, emphases, trends and relationships to other areas within psychology, followed by seminal articles that have significantly influenced counselors and researchers. The volume is organized around the six general themes of history and professional development, personal counseling, career counseling, cross-cultural counseling, counseling process and outcome, and internationalizing Counseling Psychology. In presenting articles representing these six themes that have defined counseling psychology, readers are given an essential overview to the past, the present and future directions of this applied specialty in psychology.

Part I

History and Professional Development

[1]

An Occupational Analysis of Counseling Psychology

How Special Is the Specialty?

Louise F. Fitzgerald Samuel H. Osipow

The authors would like to thank Division 17 (Counseling Psychology) for its support and assistance in conducting this study.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Louise Fitzgerald, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106.

University of California, Santa Barbara The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT: The specialty of counseling psychology has come under scrutiny as a result of recent preoccupation with licensing, credentialing, and third-party payments. A lack of clarity concerning the nature of the specialization appears to be shared by psychology in general, counseling psychology in particular, and also the general public. In the present study an occupational analysis of counseling psychology was conducted to determine what counseling psychologists actually do, how they feel about it, and how (if at all) the field is changing. The results suggest that counseling psychologists are strongly practice oriented and appear to see themselves as engaged in psychotherapy and traditionally “clinical” activities with a reduced emphasis on vocational, academic, and research-focused behaviors. This finding is particularly true of the younger respondents. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the counseling-clinical distinction and the scientist-practitioner model.

Counseling psychologists have reviewed their professional identity extensively and have striven to differentiate the specialty from counselor education on the one hand and clinical psychology on the other. Whiteley’s 1984 article and the series of volumes edited by Whiteley (1980), Whiteley and Fretz (1980), and Whiteley, Kagan, Harmon, Fretz, and Tanney (1984) illustrate this process of self-analysis.

This review of the professional identity of counseling psychology has, however, taken place in the absence of an appropriate database. Curiously, despite all our discussions, no occupational analysis of counseling psychology has ever really been done. The closest approximation to such an occupational analysis of counseling psychology is the report of Joseph Samler to the Greystone Conference in 1964 (Samler, 1964). Samler provided an excellent analysis of the settings in which counseling psychologists work and of what they do in those settings as well as comparisons of counseling psychologists with members of other American Psychological Association (APA) divisions, such as 14 (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) and 12 (Clinical Psychology). Samler also tabulated the interests of counseling psychologists in various kinds of professional service areas and compared his results with those of Yamamoto (1963), Scott (1961), and Peterson and Featherstone (1962). He concluded by providing a short list of job duties in various major settings in which counseling psychologists are employed, such as Veterans Administration hospitals and university counseling centers.

Although those lists were useful as far as they went, they do not fulfill the detailed requirements of a job analysis, nor are they contemporary, given that the Samler study is now over 20 years old. Reporting to the same Greystone Conference, Darley (1964) described in somewhat philosophical terms what counseling psychologists need to know, whereas Jordaan, Myers, Layton, and Morgan (1968) provided definitions and job descriptions of counseling psychologists in a pamphlet designed for public consumption. As good as this pamphlet is, however, it is not based on the collection of data but rather on careful but unsystematic observation of duties of counseling psychologists in various work settings. It is also dated, having been written more than 15 years ago.

More recently, Osipow, Cohen, Jenkins, and Dostal (1979) and Tipton (1983) have collected data showing something about what counseling psychologists do and how their work is different from that of other kinds of psychologists working in clinical areas. Other contemporary studies (Banikiotes, 1977, 1980) have focused on the settings in which counseling psychologists provide their services. Again, however, these do not qualify as job-analytic studies but rather as data-based, descriptive studies of the work of counseling psychologists.

Finally, the Educational Testing Service (ETS; Rosenfield, Shimberg, & Thornton, 1983), under contract with the American Association of State Psychology Boards, conducted a major job analysis of the work of licensed psychologists in the United States. The ETS study found relatively few differences among psychologists in various work settings, thus supporting the view that the four major specialties (i.e., clinical, counseling, school, and industrial/organizational [I/O]) do not differ substantially from one another—although of the four, the I/O specialty appears the most distinctive. To some extent this finding is based on the nature of the ETS methodology, which consisted of a factor analysis based on responses to a questionnaire assessing knowledge, skills, and abilities. This analysis resulted in four categories involving assessment, intervention, organizational applications, and research and measurement. Few differences were found on these four factors. The question still remains whether the kinds of interventions used by each specialty differ.

The present study was designed to generate an appropriate data base to permit judgments to be made about the work settings and actual work activities of counseling psychologists. Our objective was to conduct an empirical occupational analysis of counseling psychology in order to speak definitively about what tasks counseling psychologists actually perform.

Instrument

A task-based job analysis instrument was developed, which consisted of 64 work behaviors, classified into seven categories or dimensions. The instrument was constructed through traditional job analysis procedures as outlined in standard training manuals. Instrument construction consisted of the following five-step procedure. First, background materials pertaining to the occupation of counseling psychology were reviewed. The materials consisted of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (U.S. Department of Labor, 1977), the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the reports of professional conferences on counseling psychology (e.g., Greystone, Vail), and all APA publications (e.g., APA, 1981; Jordaan et al., 1968) relating to what counseling psychologists do. The task and behaviors suggested by these materials were used as a starting point to generate a preliminary list of work behaviors that are performed by counseling psychologists. According to the Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Procedures (“Adoption by Four. Agencies of Uniform Guidelines,” 1978), a work behavior is

An activity performed to achieve the objectives of the job. Work behaviors involve observable (physical) components and unobservable (mental) components. A work behavior consists of the performance of one or more tasks. Knowledges, skills, and abilities are not behaviors, although they may be applied in work behaviors. (p. 38, 308)

The materials used in the present study were written to be consistent with this definition. Each work behavior was categorized by the principal investigators into logical categories. Three categories, or domains, were identified in advance (counseling, research, and teaching/training), and another four emerged from the review and classification process (supervision, administration, consultation, and writing and editing). The identification and labeling of the work domains suggested other, related behaviors that were also assigned to the appropriate domain.

When this process was completed, the fourth step in the procedure was to prepare a list of all work behaviors, organized by domain, and to submit this list to a panel of subject matter experts (SMEs). This panel consisted of 35 persons who were well known as experts in a particular area (e.g., counseling, research); five experts were selected for each of the seven domains.¹ The panel was asked to review, refine, and rework any statements that were not clear. They were also asked to add any behaviors that occurred to them. When the lists were returned, the authors reviewed and adapted the suggestions of the panel, refined the language of the questionnaire, and put the list into final form. This process resulted in a list of 64 work behaviors, classified into seven domains.

Scaling and Procedure

The present study was designed to investigate four broad areas: (a) What do counseling psychologists actually do on their jobs? (b) which behaviors are considered most important to the proper performance of the job? (Importance is a somewhat subjective determination, but is usually defined in terms of the consequence of error.) (c) which behaviors are considered by the sample to be central to their professional identity? and (d) in which work behaviors and domains do counseling psychologists spend most of their time? Thus, the questionnaire was scaled to collect these four kinds of data. The respondents were instructed to read through the complete inventory and circle the numbers of those behaviors that they actually performed in their present job. Behaviors that they had performed in the past, or that they were trained to perform but actually did not, were to be ignored. Thus, the percentage of respondents who circled or did not circle each item represented the percentage of the sample who performed or did not perform each work behavior.

Each item was followed by three 7-point, Likert-type scales, measuring importance, professional identity, and relative amount of time spent on each behavior. Respondents were instructed to go back and rate the items they had circled on each of these three scales. Following completion of the ratings, subjects were asked to estimate and report the percentage of their time they spent on each of the seven dimensions. Finally, subjects completed a biographical data sheet to provide information on the parameters of the sample.

Sample Selection and Characteristics

At the time the survey was initiated, Division 17 (Counseling Psychology) consisted ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I HISTORY AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PART II PERSONAL COUNSELING
• PART III CAREER COUNSELING
• PART IV CROSS-CULTURAL COUNSELING
• PART V COUNSELING PROCESS AND OUTCOME
• PART VI INTERNATIONALIZING COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY
• Index