TPC-Journal-V4-Issue5

The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 5 447 individuals who were identified as meeting these criteria received an e-mail. The e-mail directed participants to an online survey titled The 2012 School Counselor Survey. The number of CSCs provided by the Department of Education was 476. A total of 127 CSCs responded to the invitation to take part in this study, all of whom met the criteria for employment in a rural setting, resulting in a response rate of 27%. Respondents with missing or invalid data ( n = 9, less than 7%) were eliminated via listwise deletion, leaving a total number of 118 participants in this study. Listwise deletion entails eliminating participants with missing data on any of the variables and is the appropriate method for removal of missing data due to this study’s sufficient sample size (Sterner, 2011). Of the 118 participants (91 women, 27 men), 110 identified their cultural/racial background as Caucasian, five identified as Native American and three identified as Multiracial. Thirty-four participants stated their age as 25–35 years, 31 as 36–45 years, 30 as 46–55 years and 23 as 56 years or older. The majority of the respondents identified as married ( n = 96), 15 as single and seven as having a life partner or being in a committed relationship. Twelve of the participants stated that they had 2 or fewer years of experience as school counselors, 18 had 3–5 years, 25 had 6–10 years, 42 had 11–20 years, 19 had 21–30 years and two stated that they had 40 or more years of experience. Regarding licenses and certifications held, 109 of the participants stated that they were South Dakota CSCs, 36 were National Certified Counselors, 12 were Licensed Professional Counselors, two held the Licensed Professional Counselor–Mental Health designation and one participant identified as a National Certified School Counselor. Regarding the number of schools under participants’ direct responsibility, 86 indicated that they had one school, 21 had two schools, five had three schools, four had four schools and two had five schools. Five participants stated that they were responsible for direct counseling services for 100 or fewer students, 14 for 101–200 students, 22 for 201–300 students, 29 for 301–400 students, 18 for 401–500 students, 14 for 501–600 students, 10 for 601–700 students and six for 701 or more students. Twenty-one stated that there were no other school counselors in their school district, 15 stated that there was one other school counselor, 17 stated that there were two others, 13 stated that there were three to five, 29 stated that there were six to 11, seven stated that there were 12–18, six stated that there were 20–25, four stated that there were 45–50, five stated that there were 52–56 and one stated that there were 60 other school counselors in the participant’s district. Regarding the number of other school counselors working with them in the same building, 58 respondents stated that there were no other counselors, five stated that there was another part-time counselor, 29 stated that there was one other full-time counselor, 11 stated that there were two, four stated that there were three, five stated that there were four and six participants stated that there were five other counselors in their building. Instrumentation Participants completed a modified version of the school counselor survey used by Page et al. (2001) in their national survey of school counselor supervision. The modifications included additional questions related to participants’ perceptions of the usefulness of receiving supervision and supervision training via distance methods. Distance methods included the statewide video conferencing system, teleconference and e-mail. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software (version 19.0) was utilized to screen the data, gather descriptive data and analyze the data, as well as to determine frequencies and percentages for the demographic variables. To answer the research questions, data were analyzed by creating tables using SPSS to determine frequencies, averages and percentages. For research questions 1, 2 and 3, a Fisher’s Exact Test (a variant of the chi-square test for independence for small sample sizes) with an alpha level of .05 was used to determine whether there was a relationship between a participant’s age, years of experience, number of schools under the participant’s direct responsibility, number of students for whom the participant had to provide counseling services, the presence of other CSCs in the building and district, and the participant’s responses.