Development and evaluation of new factor scales for the expectations about counseling inventory in a college sample

Abstract

Given the lack of agreement over the factor structure and scoring system used with the Expectations About Counseling Inventory (EAC-B), the primary purpose of this investigation was to reevaluate the factor structure of the EAC-B and to construct factor scales based on that structure. After constructing these scales, the second objective was to evaluate the relationships among expectations about counseling, the five-factor model of personality (FFM), and gender-related variables. The responses of 460 undergraduate students to all 66 items on the EAC-B suggested three factors: facilitative conditions, counselor expertise, and client involvement. Expectations for facilitative conditions were positively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, masculinity, and femininity; expectations for counselor expertise were negatively correlated with openness and agreeableness and positively correlated with masculinity; and expectations for client involvement were positively correlated with extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and femininity. Femininity was the strongest predictor of the facilitative conditions and client involvement scales when the effects of all the other variables were partialled out, whereas openness to experience and gender were the best predictors of counselor expertise when the effects of all the other variables were partialled out.