TPC-Journal-V3-Issue3

178 The Professional Counselor \Volume 3, Issue 3 For the Career scale, the five stem items were drawn from the language in the ASCA (2012) National Model and included helping students to (1) develop skills to locate, evaluate and interpret career information; (2) demonstrate knowledge about the changing workplace; (3) identify personal skills, interests, and abilities and relate them to career choices; (4) assess and modify educational plans to support career goals; and (5) describe the effect of work on lifestyle. For the Personal-Social scale, the five stem items were drawn from the language in the ASCA (2012) National Model and included helping students to (1) identify and express feelings; (2) use effective communication skills; (3) learn how to make and keep friends; (4) learn how to cope with peer pressure; and (5) learn coping skills for managing life events. The researchers developed five items for the Direct Counseling Services scale, including (1) providing individual counseling services; (2) providing small-group counseling services; (3) assessing student concerns for appropriate community referrals; (4) providing play therapy to elementary-aged children; and (5) providing activity-based counseling to older children and adolescents. Finally, the researchers developed five items for the Support Functions scale, including (1) reviewing or changing students’ class schedule; (2) coordinating and administering achievement tests, (3) participating in lunch duty/hall duty/bus duty; (4) substitute teaching classes for absent teachers; and (5) helping administrators with principal’s office duties. For each of the 25 items, participants were asked to indicate which of eight professionals typically working in school settings would be qualified to perform the specific duty. The eight professionals from which participants could select included school counselors, school psychologists, teachers, social workers, principals, paraprofessionals, registrars and administrative assistants. For each item, participants could select one or more of the eight professionals who would be qualified to perform the specific duty. The items were presented in a random order and not grouped by the five domains. A Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was calculated for each of the five scales to evaluate the reliability of the instrument. Internal consistency reliability is an index of the consistency of participant responses on items purporting to measure the same construct. Greater consistency in responses signifies that there was less error in the measurement of the purported construct(s) of interest, which is desirable. High reliability also suggests that the scale is in fact measuring what it is intended to measure—that is, construct validity. Results indicated that the instrument had acceptable reliability on the Academic (α = .86), Career (α = .86), Personal-Social (α = .81), Direct Counseling Services (α = .77), and Support Functions (α = .80) scales. For each item, a total item score was created by summing the number of school professionals identified as competent to perform the duty (range 0–8). Table 1 lists the means for each of the 25 items, sorted from most to least role-diffused. Next, overall domain scores were calculated by summing the mean item scores for the five items in the particular domain, resulting in a possible domain score ranging from 0–40. Table 2 lists the means for each of the five domains, sorted by most to least role-diffused. Finally, Table 3 lists the Pearson’s Product- Moment Correlation coefficients of the role diffusion ratings across the five domains. Prior to data analysis, the data were tested for requisite assumptions and screened for potential outliers. If not eliminated, outliers undermine the trustworthiness of the data because they unduly influence the group means and thus the normality of the data—that is, by affecting skewness and kurtosis. The data screening procedures yielded no outliers. Moreover, the data met all assumptions including normality (skewness and kurtosis values were within range), homogeneity of error variances and sphericity. Thus, data analysis proceeded without any adjustments.