Determining Counseling Self-efficacy of Indian Students of Speech Language Pathology.

Purpose: Counseling self-efficacy is the view that counselors have of their capability to practice certain abilities that contribute to good clinical service. Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs) require to possess strategic counseling skills for effective service delivery. Although counseling is mostly considered an essential component during rehabilitation, many SLPs receive no explicit training on the same. The current study aims to explore self-efficacy measures in counseling among Indian students of speech-language pathology.

Methods: The Counselor Activity Self-Efficacy Scales (CASES), which is a 6-point Likert rating scale developed by Victorino and Hinkle (2019) was adopted to assess the self-efficacy of 105 student clinicians (undergraduates and graduates) of speech-language pathology. The study comprised of two phases. Phase one included the administration of the CASES questionnaire on the target population, and Phase two included performing frequency-based analysis on Helping Skills (HS), Emotional Support Skills (ESS), and Session Management Skills (SMS) domains.

Results: The majority of participants felt somewhat confident over questions in the HS and ESS domain, while a large proportion felt very confident over the questions in the SMS domain. Although the student clinicians felt somewhat confident and very confident in most of the domains, none of the participants were completely confident in any of the domains.

Conclusion: Having a counseling self-efficacy tool will help estimate the level of counseling competency one may possess. The results of the study can be used to design effective counseling-based training programs for student clinicians and practicing professionals, to achieve productive therapeutic connections with patients and caregivers.