Values of counseling students: a preliminary examination

Abstract

This study was conducted on the longitudinal data collected from Boğaziçi University guidance and psychological counseling students from freshman to senior year. Its aim was to determine if there was a change in values of students from freshman to senior year. A total of 164 students (113 females and 51 males) participated in this descriptive longitudinal study. Personal, social and counseling values, attitudes toward counseling service, career plans in counseling, favorable and unfavorable client groups; race, ethnic groups or nations students think they would have difficulty to work with, counseling approaches adopted and value orientations of students were investigated. To answer these questions, some questions were selected from the Values Instrument which was developed by Albayrak – Kaymak. There were structured and open- ended questions which were conceptually grouped. Frequencies, percentages and McNemar test were used to analyze the data. Findings, in general, showed that counseling education had an impact on variables studied. While the importance of personal values like reliability, justice, loyalty, sincerity and responsibility increased; the importance of love, rationalism and selfhood decreased. In social values; importance of justice and social welfare increased but of love and reliability decreased. Positive attitudes of students toward getting counseling help were quite high in both grade levels. Number of students who would like to work as a psychological counselor decreased from freshman to senior year. While the preference to work with a squatter settler and a family with a child with disability increased, a suicidal introvert decreased. As unfavorable clients, avoidance of convicted rapist, incestuous parent, pander increased; mentally retarded, person with AIDS, involuntary counselee and terminally ill decreased. The ratio of students who thought that they would not have difficulty while working with ethnically different groups increased. Value orientations changed in the favor of harmony, present and becoming. The counseling approach senior students found closest to them was Humanistic and the counseling value they found most important was reliability. The results are indicative of the importance of inclusion of cultural issues and value awareness in counselor training.