Participants
The participants of the study will consist of a national sample of licensed professional counselors (LPC) who are currently in practice and their supervisors. This sample of LPCs will include both those individuals who have been trained in a CACREP-accredited counseling program and those individuals who were trained in a non-CACREP-accredited counseling program. Including both samples will help to give counseling service outcome measures for each group to compare the effectiveness. Ideally, the sample will be representative of the overall demographic population of counselor supervisors and professional counselors in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. so the findings of the sample can be generalized to the population of LPCs. The supervisors of LPCs have been included to evaluate the LPCs to reduce the self-report bias that may occur if the LPCs evaluate their own outcome measures. Procedures Previous studies examining practicing counselors have used the parameter of including licensed professional counselors who have passed the NCE within the last 10 years (Mellin, Hunt, & Nichols, 2011). However, this study would also include counselors who have passed the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination within the last 10 years because not all states require the NCE for licensure, but many require one or either the NCE or NCMHCE. The National Board of Certified Counselors would be contacted for a list of potential participants. These participants would then be contacted about participating in the research. Participants would be given informed consent through an online or mailed consent form developed prior to conducting any research or gathering any data. Data will be gathered from the participants through a set of evaluations of the LPCs by their supervisors. Participants would be given the option of completing the evaluations online or on paper which would be mailed out to them. Over a period of one year, the supervisors would evaluate their supervisees 12 times, once a month, to get a stable measure of the counseling services provided by the counselors. By evaluating the LPCs more than once, the chances of bias of supervisors are reduced and changes that may occur in the LPCs services may be accounted for more thoroughly. Once data has been returned to the researcher, the evaluations will be analyzed to compare the effectiveness of both groups of counselors. Included in the data analysis will be the evaluation of the potential use of CACREP standards as the educational requirement for national …show more content…
This scale assesses counselor competencies through the scoring of counseling knowledge and skills. Scores are given on a Likert scale of 1 (Harmful) to 5 (Exceeds Expectations/Demonstrates Competencies). The categories for scoring on the CCS-R are aligned with the 2016 CACREP Common Core standards which will help to assess whether CACREP standards are sufficient for the educational requirements for national counseling licensure. Sample categories from the CCS-R include nonverbal skills, reflection of meaning, professional ethics, and multicultural competence in the counseling relationship. Included with the CCS-R will be a questionnaire (Appendix B) for the supervisors and supervisees to examine the sufficiency and opinions of practicing counselors on using CACREP standards for national licensure. The questionnaire will include questions such as, “Did you graduate from a CACREP-accredited counseling education program?” and “What are the disadvantages of using CACREP standards for national licensure