How will this help me? Exploring expectations at the time of intake among first-time users of a college counseling center

Abstract

Objective

The study explored first-time college counseling center clients’ preintake expectations of the counseling process and the extent that these expectations were related to confidence that counseling will be effective and attendance after intake. Participants: Participants were 418 first-time counseling clients with complete intake and termination data from September 2013 to April 2016. Methods: New clients reported open-ended counseling expectations which were coded into three distinct categories: don’t know, just talking, or beyond talking. Outcome measures include rated preintake confidence that counseling will be effective and client attendance at scheduled follow up session. Results: Regression analysis results indicate that expectations categorized as don’t know were associated with lower pretreatment counseling confidence while beyond talking expectations predicted postintake attendance. Conclusions: Simple expectations about how counseling will work are a relevant therapeutic factor to consider in improving outcomes for counseling center clients.

Keywords:

• Client characteristics
• common factors
• counseling
• counseling expectations
• lay theories

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of Denison University.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Emily Hayes, Kendra Schafer, and Taylor Wigglesworth, research assistants at Denison University, who served as volunteer coders on this project.