Volume_4_Issue_1_Digest

TPC D igest 15 Viviana Demichelis Machorro is a doctoral student at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Antonio Tena Suck is the Director of the Psychology Department at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Correspondence can be addressed to Viviana Demichelis Machorro, Universidad Iberoamericana, Departamento de Psicología, Prolongación Paseo de la Reforma 880, Lomas de Santa Fe, 01219 México Distrito Federal, viviana.demichelis@amopp.org. F rom the need to understand the identity of counselors in Mexico, the authors conducted an exploratory study through cultural domain analysis to understand the meaning that advanced students and profes- sional counselors give to their professional identity. Professional identity is a concept that a group of professionals possess about them- selves and their work. The concept is dynamic; its development starts at initial training and is influenced by role models such as teachers and supervisors, as well as by social reality. In this study, the authors posed the ques- tion, “What meaning do Mexican counselors give to their professional identity?” The de- pendent variable was professional identity and the attributive variable was the level of prepa- ration (student or professional). The study was transversal (data recovery at a unique time frame) and descriptive. The authors sought to verify or rule out whether the meaning of professional identity is different between students and professional counselors in Mexico. We applied cultural domain analysis—a method used to define or delimit a concept, which ensures that inter- ested parties are referring to the same thing. Free-listing technique was also used, by which participants were asked to make a list of 10 words to define the concept counselor profes- sional identity. The participants in the study included 15 advanced students of the master in counsel- ing program at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and 12 professional counsel- ors who graduated from this program. More similarities than differences were found in the Professional Identity of Counselors in Mexico: A Commentary – DIGEST Viviana Demichelis Machorro Antonio Tena Suck