TPC Journal-V6, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 4 378 Currently, when programs are deciding to use CBCs, they will find minimal information about key aspects such as what company or vendor to use when conducting CBCs; who is financially liable for the CBC; when a CBC should be required; how information from CBCs are used; how students are informed about CBCs; and how to decide if an offense is related to the counseling profession (Weuve et al., 2008). Counseling programs could be held liable for not conducting CBCs, especially if the safety of others is compromised. At the same time, counseling programs also could face liability for using CBCs when guidelines are unclear, applicants are not informed, and policies are not in place about how CBC results may be used. Given the limited research on this issue, the purpose of this study was to determine how CACREP- accredited master’s programs are utilizing CBCs regarding applicants and current students. Specifi- cally, the following research questions were addressed: (a) Do CACREP-accredited master’s programs require applicants to undergo a CBC? (b) What are the program’s procedures for performing the CBC of applicants? (c) Do programs have established protocols regarding how the results of CBCs affect applicants? ( d) Do CACREP-accredited master’s programs require current students to undergo a CBC? (e) What are the program’s procedures for performing the CBCs of current students? (f) Do programs have established protocols regarding how the results of CBCs affect current students? and (g) What do CACREP program representatives believe are their legal and ethical obligations related to performing CBCs with applicants or current students? Methodology Participants and Procedures Participants were the program contacts for the 270 CACREP-accredited master’s programs listed on the official CACREP Web site in summer of 2013. Due to the small size of this population, the entire population was sampled to provide the best approximation of the population’s true characteristics (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2009). Recruitment of participants was conducted via an e-mail to each program contact inviting them to participate in the study and including a link to an online survey. The sample size decreased due to invalid e-mail addresses, which resulted in the final sample of 261 CACREP-accredited program contacts. A total of 86 participants completed the survey; however, respondents with missing or invalid data ( n = 3, less than 2%) were eliminated via listwise deletion, leaving a total number of 83 participants included in this study. Although there are multiple options for dealing with missing data, listwise deletion was used by eliminating participants with missing data on any of the variables in this study (Sterner, 2011). This resulted in a final response rate of 32%, which falls within the acceptable 30% response rate for online surveys (University of Texas at Austin, Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment, 2011). Of the 86 program contacts who provided usable data, 29 indicated their programs were in the South, 28 defined their program being in the Northeast, 17 stated their program was in the Midwest, and 9 indicated that their program was in the West. The majority of the participants reported that their programs offered degrees in both the clinical mental health/community track (84%) and the school track (83%). Further, 17% offered the marriage, couple, and family track, 13% offered the student affairs/college track, 6% had the addiction track, and 4% reported offering the career track to students. Table 1 provides a breakdown of specialty track programs offered by participants. The survey for the current study was designed based on the Criminal Background Check Survey developed by Erwin and Toomey (2005) related to admissions and CACREP-accredited programs performing CBCs. The 13 questions from the original Erwin and Toomey survey were used as a foundation for 30 questions that were created for the online survey utilized to gain information from CACREP-accredited program contacts. Participants were asked to identify if their programs