Audiovisual versus Quasi-Counseling Analogues: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Using clients' responses as dependent measures, this study investigated differences in perceptions of counselors among subjects who engaged in dyadic interaction or observed that interaction. Counselors of three levels of training and experience conducted brief interviews with students and were simultaneously observed by other students via either closed-circuit television or a one-way mirror. Results from this “quasi-counseling” vs “audiovisual” analogue showed that raters' status had little effect on subjects' relative judgments of the three counselors. Since the observational vantage point of the subjects in this study seemed unimportant in determining their relative ratings of counselors, the use of audiovisual analogue research seems warranted in studies of perceptions of counselors' behavior. Several suggestions were made for increasing the likelihood of unambiguous data.