A Measure of Counselor Competency

Abstract

Counselor educators need to be able to demonstrate their effectiveness in training new counselors; however, currently few valid or reliable measures exist for assessing educators' impact. The authors describe the development of such an instrument, the Counseling Skills Scale. They began by revising an existing scale and then they solicited feedback from experts and a focus group. They used the instrument to compare beginning counselors‐in‐training with those who had completed a counseling skills course. Finally, they conducted an item analysis. A paired t test showed significant improvements in counseling skills (t = 4.51, p < .000) from pretest to posttest. Cronbach's alpha showed internal consistency to be .90.

Assessing Competencies in Couples and Family Therapy/Counseling: A Call to the Profession

“…Effect sizes ranged from medium to high. Eriksen and McAuliffe (2003) found that scores for students in a Theories and Techniques course changed significantly in a positive direction on the overall score on the SCS and for all subscales except Develops the Therapeutic Relationship. The effect size was .80, indicating that the change was meaningful.…”

“…The Counseling Skills Scale ( Eriksen & McAuliffe, 2003 ). In 2003, Eriksen and McAuliffe revised the SCS to develop the Counseling Skills Scale (CSS).…”

“…Internal consistency reliability and construct validity have been found in two studies (see Table 1). One difficulty with the measure is that item to scale correlations for the subscales showed that some items correlated higher with other scales than their own scale, which may indicate that the scores do not represent true factors (Eriksen & McAuliffe, 2003). In addition, inter‐rater reliability studies are needed.…”

The Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision Volume 5, Number 1

“…Researchers have developed and examined a variety of assessments to measure students' counseling competencies, assessing skills such as verbal response modes, nonverbal behaviors, and facilitative conditions in counseling (e.g., Counseling Skills Scale [CSS], Eriksen & McAuliffe, 2003;Skilled Counseling Scale [SCS], Urbani et al, 2002), and comprehensive measures that include counseling skills, dispositions, and behaviors (e.g., Counseling Competencies Scale; Swank, Lambie & Witta, 2012). However, counselor educators have used these assessments solely to measure the performance of counseling students after they are enrolled in preparation programs, instead of also integrating them within the admissions process.…”

“…Counselor educators have developed several assessments to measure counseling competencies (e.g., Counseling Skills Scale [CSS], Eriksen & McAuliffe, 2003;Skilled Counseling Scale [SCS], Urbani et al, 2002;Counseling Competencies Scale [CCS], Swank, et al, 2012). However, these instruments have not been used to screen applicants.…”