A Comparison of Factor Dimensions in Revised Scales for Student Client Evaluation of Counselors in a University Counseling and Testing Center

Abstract

For a sample of 146 student clients who judged the effectiveness of their counselors in a university counseling and testing center on a modified form of the Evaluation of Counselors Scale (EOC), a factor analysis of the intercorrelations of student responses to 19 items provided four orthogonal dimensions portraying perceptions of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the counseling experience: (a) Personal Growth, (b) Atmosphere or Environment of the Counseling Center, (c) Trust or Confidence in the Counselor, and (d) Competence in Test Interpretation and Academic-Career Counseling Skills. A formerly identified factor of Counselor Effectiveness appeared to merge with Personal Growth—a circumstance that might have been associated with the rewording of one item and omission of another that had been considered somewhat ambiguous. It would appear that in general the modified form of the EOC reflects essentially the same constructs as those found in earlier versions.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Guilford, J. P. Fundamental statistics in psychology and education (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965

Nie, N. H. , Hull, C. H. , Jenkins, J. G. , Steinbrenner, K. , and Bent, D. H. SPSS: Statistical package for the social sciences (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.

Shaffer, P. , Murillo, N. , and Michael, W. B. The factorial validity of a scale for evaluation of counselors in a university counseling and testing center. EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT, 1978, 38, 1085-1096.

Shaffer, P. , Murillo, N. , and Michael, W. B. The factor dimensions of a revised scale for student client evaluation of counselors in a university counseling and testing center. EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT, 1980, 40, 1081-1089.