Interpersonal Behaviour in Counseling: Client and Counselor Expectations and Experiences Related to Their Evaluation of
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Interpersonal Behaviour in Counseling: Client and Counselor Expectations and Experiences Related to Their Evaluation of Session Gunnar Schedin1,2
Expectations and experiences of the interpersonal behaviour between the counselor and the client were investigated in an exploratory study, and related to the evaluation of career counseling sessions with adolescents in a secondary school context in Sweden. The relationship was measured by using the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour model (SASB). In general, positive evaluation as judged by the clients’ was found to be related to the clients having more positive expectations and experience of their own and counselors’ affiliative behaviour. No positive associations between own expected and experienced behaviour and evaluation were found as judged by the counselors. Affiliative behaviour was found to be the most important dimension in predicting evaluation of sessions in a positive way for the clients. KEY WORDS: career counseling; expectations; experiences; interpersonal behaviour, SASB.
The purpose of this study was to investigate interpersonal behaviour in career counseling by comparing expected and perceived interpersonal behaviour during the course of a career counseling session. More precisely, the overall question of this study was: Are there dimensions of behaviours by clients and counselors, in career counseling, that are considered more important in terms of their relationship to client and counselor evaluation of the session? How the clients and counselors’ behave towards each other will provide the context in which client change is made possible. Despite the relative importance of the area of reciprocal behaviour and 1 Department
of Child and Youth Education, Special Education and Counselling, Ume˚a, SE-901 87, Ume˚a Sweden. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Gunnar Schedin, Department of Child and Youth Education, Special Education and Counselling, Ume˚a University, SE-901 87 Ume˚a, Sweden; e-mail: [email protected]. 57 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 0165-0653/05/0300-0057/0
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the client/counselor relationship in career counseling, little data has been gathered concerning clients and counselors expectations and experiences of their own and each other’s behaviour. How the expectations and experiences of overt behaviour is expressed and is valued in the role of being a client or a counselor is a matter of exploration. The development of the relationship in career counseling is at the beginning of exploration. In their extensive review of the literature regarding the counseling relationship Sexton and Whiston (1994) stated that the relationship is vital in determining success or failure of the counseling process and outcome. The relationship has been acknowledged to be important not only as the contextual environment for participants in the session—but also as a primary mechanism for change (Kolden, Howard, & Maling, 1994). In addition to the importance of the relationship, Meara and Patton indicated that “career
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