TPC Journal V7, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 2 133 Demographic questionnaire. A demographic questionnaire consisting of 14 questions collected relevant information regarding participant age, gender, ethnicity, region, school setting (i.e., private, public) and level (e.g., elementary, middle), student enrollment, counselor caseload characteristics, degree earned, licensure and certification, years of experience and training in and use of the ASCA National Model. Demographic data were selected for inclusion based on a literature review indicating important relationships between these variables and school counseling outcomes (Scarborough & Culbreth, 2008; Sink & Yillik-Downer, 2001). School Counselor Activity Rating Scale (SCARS) . The SCARS is a 48-item scale reflecting best practice recommendations for school counselors based on the ASCA National Standards (Campbell & Dahir, 1997) and the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2003). It was designed to measure the frequency with which school counselors perform specific work activities, and the preferred frequency of performing those activities (Scarborough, 2005; Scarborough & Culbreth, 2008). The instrument contains five sections—counseling, consultation, curriculum, coordination and “other” activities. Participants indicate their actual and preferred performance of common school counseling activities on a frequency scale (1 = rarely do this activity to 5 = routinely do this activity ), including “other” non-counseling activities that fall outside the school counselor role (e.g., coordinate the standardized testing program). A SCARS total score is calculated by adding the totals from each subscale or calculating mean scores, with higher scores indicating higher levels of engagement. The SCARS validation study supported a four-factor solution representing the counseling, coordination, consultation and curriculum categories. Analysis on the “other” school counseling activities subscale, consisting of 10 items reflecting non-counseling activities, resulted in three factors: clerical, fair share and administrative. Convergent and discriminant construct validity also were reported (Scarborough, 2005). Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients, as reported by Scarborough on the eight subscales of actual and preferred dimensions, were .93 and .90 for curriculum; .84 and .85 for coordination; .85 and .83 for counseling; .75 and .77 for consultation; .84 and .80 for clerical; .53 and .58 for fair share; and .43 and .52 for administrative. In the current study, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for actual and preferred practice were .90 and .83 for curriculum; .84 and .86 for coordination; .80 and .81 for counseling; and .76 and .73 for consultation. The intervention total subscale in our study consisted of the composite of the counseling, consultation, curriculum and coordination subscales, with Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients of .91 on both the actual and the preferred use dimensions. Similar to Scarborough (2005), the “other” duties subscale, consisting of clerical, fair share and administrative duties, had moderate reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha of .63 on the actual, and .68 on the preferred. The activities total subscale consisted of a combination of all SCARS subscales, with Cronbach’s alpha being .89 on the actual and .90 on the preferred. Various studies have been conducted since the initial validation of the SCARS and support its use as a tool yielding valid and reliable school counselor process scores (Scarborough & Culbreth, 2008; Shillingford & Lambie, 2010). School Counselor Self-Efficacy Scale (SCSE). The SCSE (Bodenhorn & Skaggs, 2005) is a 43-item self-report instrument designed to measure school counselor self-efficacy. The SCSE uses a 5-point Likert-type scale to measure responses (ranging from 1 = not confident to 5 = highly confident ) and consists of five subscales: personal and social development; leadership and assessment; career and academic development; collaboration; and cultural acceptance. A composite mean is calculated to demonstrate overall self-efficacy. SCSE responses were evaluated for reliability, omission, discrimination and group differences (Bodenhorn & Skaggs, 2005), with results supporting high reliability for the composite scale (α = .95). Analyses also indicated group differences demonstrating score validity for the scale—