TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 188 doctoral students’ satisfaction with their dissertation chairperson (satisfaction). Multiple survey questions were developed for each prominent theme in order to ensure comprehensiveness of each construct (DeVellis, 2003). Content validity. The final instrument consisted of 62 items. The initial list of items was sent to a panel of counselor educators who had recently (within the last 5 years) completed their doctoral dissertation in a CACREP-accredited counseling program, for the purpose of ensuring the appropriateness of the items for the study. Changes were made, which included adding one demographic question, changing the wording on two selection items and removing one chairperson behavior item deemed redundant. Data Analysis Data screening. Surveys were assessed to identify incomplete responses. Eleven cases were removed, leaving a total of 122 valid surveys ( N = 122). All variables showed less than 5% of missing values; therefore the listwise default was used. Linearity and normality were examined and variables did not violate assumptions. A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed in order to appropriately group individual survey items into subscales for each of the constructs. Scree plots, eigenvalues and communalities were examined to determine the appropriate factor structure for the instrument’s subscales. The final PCA for selection criteria revealed four components, with an alpha reliability of .79 and 53% of variance accounted for within the four components (success/reputation, research/methodology, collaborative style, obligation/cultural). Component titles were chosen based on the questions that loaded into each component (see Appendix A for selection criteria components, items and loadings within each component). The final PCA for chairperson behaviors revealed five components, with an alpha reliability of .94 and 67% of variance accounted for within the five components (work style, personal connection, academic assistance, mentoring abilities and professional development; see Appendix B for chairperson behavior components, items and loadings within each component). Data Analysis Separate multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to predict doctoral students’ and recent graduates’ overall satisfaction with their chairperson. Selection criteria and behavior components identified in the PCAs were used as the predictor variables. Multiple regressions were conducted to investigate which selection criteria and which chairperson behaviors were most influential in predicting participants’ overall satisfaction with their chairperson. In regard to selection criteria, 15 participants stated that they were assigned to a chairperson and therefore were eliminated from this portion of the analysis, leaving 107 eligible participants. Prior to the regression, grouped quantitative variables were examined by testing Mahalanobis’ distance to screen for multivariate outliers. Within selection criteria, three cases exceeded the chi-square critical value, and for satisfaction items, one case exceeded the chi-square critical value, leaving a valid pool of 103 participants. Within chairperson behaviors, seven cases exceeded the chi-square critical value, and for satisfaction items, one case was found that exceeded the chi-square critical value, leaving a valid pool of 114 participants. Results Analyses focused on selection criteria and chairperson behaviors as predictors of counselor education doctoral students’ satisfaction with their dissertation chairperson. Regression results for selection criteria indicated that the overall model significantly predicted overall satisfaction, R² = .251, R² adj = .219, F (4,98) = 7.87, p ≤ .001. This model accounted for 25.1% of the variance in overall satisfaction. Review of the regression coefficients indicated that only one component, collaborative style, significantly contributed to the final model (β = .445, t (101) = 4.58, p ≤ .001; see Table 1).