TPC Journal V7, Issue 3 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 3 263 separate from the study survey for one of 20 randomly chosen $10 gift certificates to Amazon.com. Counseling needs assessment items were presented in random order within counseling modality to prevent systematic order effects; similarly, counseling modality was presented randomly. Measures Counseling needs assessment. Based on a review of the literature and feedback from two young adults with cancer, Taylor and Kashubeck-West (2013) developed three counseling needs assessment tools to explore topics that young adults with cancer might find helpful to discuss in individual, group, and family counseling. Their individual counseling needs assessment contained 31 items (Cronbach alpha = .91), their group counseling needs assessment contained 6 items (Cronbach alpha = .80), and their family counseling needs assessment contained 19 items (Cronbach alpha = .86). Comparisons of topic helpfulness between counseling modalities was limited because of the needs assessments containing different items. The current study revised Taylor and Kashubeck-West’s (2013) counseling needs assessments into one counseling needs assessment that was used to explore topic helpfulness for each counseling modality to better allow for topic comparisons. Reviewing the literature, soliciting feedback from psychosocial oncology mental health and nursing experts, and consulting with young adults with cancer led to the revised 38-item counseling needs assessment used in the current study. Participants were asked to rate their perception of how helpful each of 38 topics would be to discuss in individual counseling, group counseling, and family counseling. Individual counseling was defined as “attending counseling by yourself” (Cronbach alpha = .96); group counseling was defined as “attending counseling with people you have never met before who also have been diagnosed with cancer between the ages of 18–39 and are currently between the ages of 18–39” (Cronbach alpha = .97); and family counseling was defined as “attending counseling with someone you personally know” (Cronbach alpha = .98). Participants selected their responses on a Likert-based scale ranging from 1 ( very unhelpful ) to 3 ( neither helpful nor unhelpful ) to 5 ( very helpful ) for each of the three counseling modalities. Finally, participants were asked to rank their preferences for counseling modalities, with 1 being their most preferred counseling modality and 3 being their least preferred. Demographic items. Participants were asked to report their age, gender, race/ethnicity, relationship status, sexual orientation, and current socioeconomic status. Additionally, they were asked about their medical treatment status—whether they were currently in medical treatment for their cancer diagnosis or if they had completed medical treatment—as well as how many months it had been since they completed medical treatment, if applicable. Participants were asked if they had received counseling since their initial cancer diagnosis and whether they had tried to find a local, in-person support group specifically for young adults with cancer. If they had tried to locate a local in-person young adults with cancer group, participants were asked if they had been successful in finding one. Results The first goal of this study was to explore the perceived helpfulness of topics for young adults with cancer to discuss in individual counseling, group counseling, and family counseling. A mean helpfulness rating of 3.50 or greater on a 1 to 5 Likert-based scale—on which 3.0 was neither helpful nor unhelpful—was selected as indicating that a topic was rated as helpful to discuss in counseling. Individual counseling and group counseling both had 25 topics rated as helpful, and family counseling had 12 topics rated as helpful. Thus, participants found more than twice as many topics helpful for discussion in individual and group counseling compared to family counseling. See Table 2 for average helpfulness ratings by topic across the three counseling modalities.