TPC Journal V7, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

132 The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 2 activities, controlling for the effect of the identified demographic variables. We hypothesized that school counselors who endorse higher levels of anxiety may prefer to engage in fewer intervention activities and more non-counseling activities. This could be in an effort to please others and conform to the administrative, fair share and clerical demands of the job. No hypothesis was forwarded on attachment avoidance and discrepancies between actual and preferred activities, as related research has not examined a possible relationship. Method Participants The sample for this study consisted of elementary-level school counselors whose e-mail addresses were listed on the ASCA national database. We made the decision to select only elementary school counselors because of the unique emphasis on student personal and social development at this level (Dahir, 2004), as well as the distinct developmental needs of the student population that could potentially tap into school counselor attachment (Scarborough, 2005). Recruitment e-mails were sent to 3,798 ASCA member elementary school counselors through SurveyMonkey, employing a 3-wave multiple contact procedure. The original sample was adjusted to 3,550 because of undeliverable e-mail addresses. In total, 663 individuals responded to the survey, yielding a return rate of 19%. A priori power analysis using G*Power software determined that a minimum sample of 107 participants likely was necessary when conducting a multiple regression analysis with three independent variables. This G*Power calculation was based on an alpha level of .05, minimum power established at .80 and a moderate treatment effect size, and was conducted in the planning stages to inform needed sample size and minimize the probability of Type II error (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009). Therefore, surveys with incomplete data were completely removed from the analysis, resulting in a final sample size of 515 and a usable response rate of 14.5%. The sample consisted of 89.6% females and 9.8% males (3 participants did not indicate gender). In terms of race and ethnicity, 86.6% were Caucasian, 6%African American, 2.9% Hispanic, 1.6% Multiracial, 1.4 %Asian/Pacific Islander, and 0.4% Native American (1.2% did not indicate race or ethnicity). The predominately female and Caucasian sample is consistent with school counseling research and reflective of the population (Bodenhorn & Skaggs, 2005). Years of experience ranged from < 1 to 38, with a mean of 10.24 years. School enrollment ranged from 70 to 3,400 students, with a mean of 583.49 students. The large maximum enrollment number was caused by the inclusion of elementary-level counselors who were employed in K–12 schools. Counselor caseload ranged from 6 to 1,500, with the mean being 454.68 students. The mean age of respondents was 44 years, with a standard deviation of 11.02 years, and an age range spanning from 25 to 68 years. Regarding ASCA National Model (2012) training, only 8.5% reported not having received any training, with the overwhelming majority of the participants having received training from professional development opportunities sought on their own (67.6%), as part of master’s-level coursework (53.2%), or through their school district (31.5%). Only 5.2% of respondents reported no use of the ASCA National Model, with 14% reporting limited use, 33.8% some use, 31.5% a lot of use, and 15% extensive use. Instruments Instrumentation consisted of four measures, including a demographic questionnaire, the School Counselor Activity Rating Scale (SCARS; Scarborough, 2005), the School Counselor Self-Efficacy Scale (SCSE; Bodenhorn & Skaggs, 2005) and the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale-Short Form (ECR- Short Form; Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt, & Vogel, 2007).