Several studies suggest that college counselors believe anxiety has been rising in recent decades. However, these surveys do not allow counselors to give nuanced answers or explicate their reasons, leaving it unclear why counselors estimate such change and how they explain its etiology. Do counselors have more nuanced beliefs than surveys suggest?…

This paper considers the implications for training and practice of counsellors' responses to the notion of challenging clients' prejudices. It explores tensions in counselling discourse between social responsibility, responsibility to the client and responsibility for one's self as counsellor. Three focus groups of counsellors were asked whether a…

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship among counselors' self-reported multicultural counseling competence and their attitudes of the geriatric population. A statistically significant negative correlation was found between participants' attitudes of the geriatric population and their self-reported multicultural counseling…

Offender status had a negative effect on dimensions involving acceptance of the client for therapy but little effect on assessment of personality variables. (Author)

Examined mental health service providers' (N=80) evaluation of deaf patients in various programs. Found staff at specialized inpatient mental health programs for the deaf had more positive attitudes than staff serving the general population. Found mental health staff evaluated some deaf patients differently from hearing patients with respect to…

Reexamines a previous study of biases in social workers, which found that, contrary to common expectations, social workers' clinical judgments tended to be biased in favor of female clients. However, this replication produced some contradictory results. (Author)

To estimate the overall effectiveness of counselor training, tested student counselors to explore "response-shift bias." Results from three groups of trainees spanning three years revealed the presence of a response-shift bias, confirmed the effectiveness of the training program, and demonstrated that students continually analyzed their…

The psychoeducational processes school diagnosticians use in decisions about students were studied. Bogus referral problem information for one of 16 "cases" was provided: assessment data indicated average performance. Fifty-two percent of the subjects recommended special education for the average child; these decisions were a function of referral…

Vocational rehabilitation students rated three physically handicapped groups and three nonphysically handicapped groups on the Personal Attribute Inventory. Groups were ranked in the order students prefered to work with them. Results indicated students described the handicapped groups more positively, but preferred to work with the nonhandicapped…

Examined both instructional effectiveness in attribution processes and practices in empathic perspective taking, in deconstructing the dispositional bias of counselor trainees. Results show that counselors receiving either of two interventions, exhibited significantly lower dispositional bias in responding to videotaped clinical cases than did…

This study attempted to determine whether counselor behavior and attitudes operated as a means of sex-role socialization, and whether male counselors tended to be more biased than female counselors when interacting with female clients. Eight male and eight female graduate students trained in role-playing situations representing a typical and an…

Measured interclinician agreement among 24 school psychologists who assessed a simulated learning disability case. Agreement was found to be moderately high for diagnosis and somewhat less for prescriptions. Little interpretational bias was shown. However the simulated lower-class Black child was judged ineligible for services more often.…

Studied the incidence of bias related to race and socioeconomic status which could confound the diagnosis of alcoholism. Graduate psychology students made a diagnosis based on videotapes. Results indicated lower socioeconomic class individuals were more often diagnosed correctly for alcoholism, and Blacks were diagnosed alcoholic more often than…

Investigated effect of clients' sex on psychotherapists' treatment recommendations. Clients' sex influenced only one treatment recommendation. Psychologists were more likely to recommend vocational counseling for same-sex clients than for opposite-sex clients. More experienced therapists rated male clients as more severely disturbed than female…

The diagnostic overshadowing bias (tendency for a diagnosis of mental retardation to overshadow a coexisting psychopathological disorder) was examined with 57 rehabilitation counselors. Diagnostic overshadowing was found with individuals with an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 58 but not with those having IQs of 70 to 80. Counselor experience with…