Exploring Therapist Self-Efficacy Change Profiles Using Latent Growth Curve Analysis

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study investigated the overall developmental trajectories of three conceptually progressive aspects of counseling self-efficacy, including helping skills (HS), session management (SM), and counseling challenges (CH), among beginning therapist trainees in China. Method: Participants included 103 beginning therapist trainees in a master’s level counselor training programme in China, who filled out measures of counselor self-efficacy in three waves over one year of practicum. Results: (a) Trainees showed highest initial level of HS, followed by SM, with CH being the lowest; and there were significant increases in all three aspects of self-efficacy. (b) Trainee age, gender, and personal therapy hours as a client were associated with the overall self-efficacy developmental trajectories. Specifically, elder therapist trainees reported higher initial levels of self-efficacy in HS and CH; female trainees reported lower initial level but higher increases in CH self-efficacy over practicum; and trainees who had more hours of personal therapy as clients showed higher initial levels on HS but not on other aspects or the change trajectories. Conclusion: Results in this study may inform trainers regarding trainees’ developmental characteristics, and assist them in planning targeted support to better foster trainee progress.

KEYWORDS:

• counseling self-efficacy
• developmental profile
• beginning therapist trainee
• Chinese cultural context
• growth mixture modeling

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to Dr. Hongyang Zhao for her helpful constructive comments for improving the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The balanced approach is discussed in Yuan et al. (1997), where items are aggregated into item parcels by the magnitude of their factor loadings. Items are matched to make the averaged item parcels have roughly equal factor loading coefficients so each item parcel has similar “weight” on the upper-level factor.