School or Guidance Counselor: How the Title Influences Public Perception

Abstract

School counselors are one of the few professions that remain split on their professional title. We replicated a previous study to determine whether the results of the original study measuring the impact of language on perceptions of school counselors’ competency were replicable by surveying a sample of the general population. Participants who completed the surveys with the term “guidance counselor” were statistically less likely to believe that school counselors were able to perform the 25 tasks assessed on the survey. Results suggest that the title impacted participants’ perceptions of the competence of school counselors.