TPC Journal V7, Issue 3 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 3 227 continued exploration of LGB counselor competence. Therefore, we aimed to examine the factor structure of the SOCCS with a sample of counselor trainees and practitioners in order to gain an increased understanding of the psychometric properties of this assessment. The following research questions guided our investigation: Research Question 1. What is the factor structure of the SOCCS with a sample of practicing counselors and counselors-in-training? Research Question 2. What is the internal consistency reliability of the SOCCS with a sample of practicing counselors and counselors-in-training? Method Participants We aimed to examine the factor structure of the SOCCS with a sample of practicing counselors and counselors-in-training. The data used for this investigation were part of a larger study regarding counselors’ preparedness to assist clients in the coming-out process. Because online surveys tend to have a lower response rate (Shih & Fan, 2009), we decided to use additional intentional data collection methods in our sampling to achieve a sample of counselors-in-training and practicing professionals. The data collection assessments were distributed through ALGBTIC in order to acquire a national sample of counseling professionals and to include individuals who may perceive themselves as competent to work with sexual minority individuals. In addition, the data collection assessments were distributed to counselors-in-training enrolled in four CACREP-accredited counseling programs in four different southeastern states with the assumption that the student population would help to cover the domain of individuals who do not believe they are competent to assist sexual minority clients in counseling. We received a total of 200 responses, which gave us a response rate of 28.41%. However, because of missing data, 45 participants were eliminated, leaving 155 (22.02%) usable cases. Although the response rate was less than the weighted average Van Horn, Green, and Martinussen (2009) noted in their meta-analysis of counseling and clinical psychology journals (49.6%), we decided our response rate was adequate to continue because of the necessity of research on the factor structure of the SOCCS and the potential value of the implications on improving counseling services for sexual minority clients. Additionally, the demographics of the sample mirrored the overall population (i.e., a majority of the participants identified as white and female), which is presented in Table 1 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). Procedure Our university’s institutional review board approved this study prior to any data collection and recruitment. We implemented the Tailor Design Method (Dillman, Smyth, & Christian, 2009) in our recruitment and data collection (e.g., invitation, survey). We utilized Qualtrics, an electronic survey research tool, to assemble our informed consent, data collection instruments, and demographic questionnaire online. Qualtrics permitted us to collect anonymous data. After data collection, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (Windows Version 20) was used for data cleaning and analysis. Data Screening Before we analyzed our data, we screened our dataset. First, we needed to remove responses with at least one incomplete item from the overall data set to promote consistency (Warner, 2013). Listwise deletion resulted in the removal of 45 cases, resulting in 155 completed data collection packets for the investigation. SOCCS item scores were converted to standardized z-scores to determine if outliers