Counselors’ Self-Efficacy: The Role of Multicultural Counseling Competencies, Social Justice, and Homosexuality Attitudes

Abstract

Counselor self-efficacy is one of the significant features of counselors that play a role in providing effective counseling services. Variables that predict counseling self-efficacy such as age, gender, supervision, and multicultural counseling competencies are counselor features which have been examined in the literature. However, the relationships between counselor self-efficacy and multicultural competencies, social justice, and homosexuality attitudes, which are the core concepts of counselor education and training, have not been examined. In this regard, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of multicultural counseling competencies, social justice, and homosexuality attitudes on the self-efficacy perceptions of counselor candidates. Fourth-grade psychological counseling and guidance students studying at various state universities in the 2020-201 academic year participated in this study. The study group of this research consisted of 277 (193 women, %69,7%) 4th-grade psychological counseling and guidance students. Multiple regression analysis and correlation analysis were utilized for the data analysis. While multicultural counseling competencies and social justice attitudes of the counselor candidates explained 36% of the variance of counselor self-efficacy, homosexuality attitudes had no predictive power on counseling self-efficacy.