Establishing Mutual Trust of Bonds in the Working Alliance from the Perspective of Polygraph (Lie-detector): An Exploratory Study of Counsellor Competency in Malaysia

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The context of this research is the development of counselors in Malaysia. It was found that there is a lack of competency among counselors in the area of mutual trust as perceived and experienced by both clients and their counselors. The research questi ons are: (a) What is the perception of clients and counselors in relation to mutual trust in the working alliance? (b) What is the perception of counselor toward the use of polygraph in relation to mutual trust in the working alliance? The discussion focuses on the concept of mutual trust and the utilization of polygraph as an intervention method in the working alliance. A two-stage research design was formulated. The first stage was a national survey using the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) and a sample of 393 clients and 133 counselors from three states, namely Kuala Lumpur, Melaka and Perlis. This quantitative method was implemented to explore the counselor's competence in relation to bonds, which include mutual trust as perceived by clients and counselors. Three open-ended questions related to the characteristics of clients and counselors, including honesty and trust, were included in the questionnaires. The second stage of the research was the focus group technique that involved 18 clients and 18 counselors. Qualitative data on the characteristics of clients and counselors that focused on honesty and trust aspects were obtained. The results from the first stage of the research revealed that there was a significant difference in perception bet ween clients and their counselors in relation to competence of the counselor in the mutual trust of bonds in the working alliance (p = 0.01). The mean score of clients‟ perception was 5.96 while that of counselors’ was 6.32. The main result related to the mutual trust component of the WAI of the second stage research indicated that honesty of counselors and clients were among the five highest categories that affect the working alliance in schools.The result related to the perception of counselor toward the use of polygraph implied that polygraph (lie-detector) technique is one of the important ways to reveal clients’ honesty.