The utilization of counseling services by Black college students has been a focus of the help seeking literature. The help seeking literature has focused on the nature of the potential problem, attitude toward counseling, rank of potential helpers, characteristics of help seekers, and the characteristics that Black students most prefer when choosing to see a counselor. The majority of this literature has primarily focused on the differences between White and Black students while ignoring within group differences. The present study examined the help seeking attitude and counselor preference of Black college students. The following hypotheses were investigated: a) whether African self-consciousness, socioeconomic status, sex, cultural mistrust, and prior counseling experience would predict attitudes toward counseling, b) whether African selfconsciousness, sex, socioeconomic status, prior counseling , and cultural mistrust would predict counselor preference for personal concerns, c) whether African self-consciousness, sex, socioeconomic status, prior counseling , and cultural mistrust would predict counselor preference for educational/vocational concerns, and d)whether African selfconsciousness, sex, socioeconomic status, prior counseling , and cultural mistrust would predict counselor preference for environmental concerns.A regression analysis using SPSS revealed that socioeconomic status, sex, and cultural mistrust were statistically significant predictors of attitude toward counseling. Three separate canonical correlations revealed that African self-consciousness, cultural mistrust, and gender were significant predictors of race and gender preferences for personal, educational /vocational, and environmental concerns experienced by Black students. Generally, Black students who were culturally committed, as measured by African self-consciousness, preferred a Black female counselor when faced with personal, educational/vocational, or environmental concerns while those Black students who were less mistrustful preferred a White female counselor for these same concerns. Limitations and implications for theory, practice, and research of the findings are discussed / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Kim, Atkinson, and Umemoto (2001) proposed that the therapy process is enhanced when the client’s cultural values are consistent with values embedded in counseling. Thus far, empirical studies have yielded inconsistent results in terms of the effect of client adherence to Asian cultural values on perceived counselor effectiveness. The present study used an audiovisual analogue design to evaluate whether participants’ adherence to Asian cultural values predicts their perceived counselor effectiveness of an Asian American counselor, based on counseling styles (Asian vs. Western style). Five sets of contrasting features were identified from the literature that differentiated Asian-style vs. Western-style counseling, including: (1) counselor roles (facilitator vs. expert); (2) individualistic vs. collectivistic approaches (i.e. focus on individual vs. focus on context/family dynamics); (3) counselor preferred mode of expression (verbal vs. non-verbal; or low context vs. high context communication); (4) avoidance of direct guidance/suggestion vs. direct guidance/suggestion; (5) avoidance of counselor self-disclosure vs. counselor self-disclosure of strategies used in the past. We hypothesized that: 1(a) stronger adherence to Asian cultural values will predict higher rating of Asian-style counseling; 1(b) weaker adherence to Asian cultural values will predict higher rating of Western-style counseling; and (2) stronger adherence to Asian cultural values will predict larger difference between ratings for Asian-style counseling and Western-style counseling. Results from the present study failed to support the first hypothesis, which states that stronger adherence to Asian cultural values will predict higher rating of Asian-style counseling. In fact, participants rated the Asian American counselor as equally effective when she employed Asian-style counseling and Western-style counseling. The lack of a significant effect of participants’ adherence to Asian cultural values on perceived counselor effectiveness based on counseling styles in our study was not unexpected given inconsistent results from past research based on one-session volunteer client study. Our study based on video vignette of a mock session of an Asian American dyad was not able to provide empirical support to Kim, Atkinson, and Umemoto (2001)’s proposition.

The purpose of this study was to develop a survey that would provide professionals with an idea as to the thoughts, feelings, and values that social workers held regarding physical punishment towards a child. Social workers stand in a position to intervene in the intergenerational transmission of violence.