The relationship of trainee self-efficacy to the process and outcome of career counseling.

Abstract

This investigation examined the role of counselor trainees' self-efficacy on measures of career counseling process, outcome, and outcome with actual clients. Twenty-four counselor trainees saw 55 clients in 3 to 12 individual sessions. Results indicated that (a) career counseling self-efficacy increased by a standard deviation from prepracticum to postpracticum; (b) client scores significantly improved from pretest to posttest across multiple career outcome measures; (c) clients' working alliance, goal attainment, and decidedness indicated significant growth; (d) the significant growth on the process variable and small o outcome variables did not appear to be related to career counseling self-efficacy; and (e) career counseling self-efficacy apparently related to certain career counseling outcome measures in a manner suggesting much greater complexity than the more self-efficacy is better philosophy would imply. Counselor self-efficacy has been the subject of numerous investigations (Larson, 1998; Larson & Daniels, 1998); surprisingly, however, no studies have been reported that investigated the relationship between career counseling self-efficacy and process and outcome measures with real clients in naturally occurring counseling settings. There is little question that counselor self-efficacy is potentially an important variable in counselor training. Counselor training programs are invested in having their trainees perform efficaciously, to persist when difficult stages of counseling emerge, to expend effort so as to be effective with a complex array of clients, and to perform at high levels of competence with their clients. All of these critical behaviors have been demonstrated to relate to one's sense of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977, 1982, 1991). Self-efficacy has been denned as people's judgments in their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). The tremendous amount of attention that the construct of self-efficacy has been given in the counseling training literature (see Larson, 1998; Larson & Daniels, 1998) is understandabl e in that self-efficacy beliefs have been demonstrated to predict choice of behavioral activities, effort expended on those activities, persistence despite obstacles, and actual performance (Bandura, 1977). Clearly, these characteristics are all of vital importance to counselor trainees. Theoretically, if