The Professional Counselor | Volume 12, Issue 1 53 counselors and how they potentially impact CS, burnout, and STS. After conducting an exhaustive search of the literature, we found no other study that examined the potential relationship between counselors’ developmental history using the ACEs and PCEs assessments and their levels of burnout, CS, and STS. Method This study entailed a cross-sectional, non-experimental correlational design and reported descriptive statistics, as well as results of multiple regression models. Relationships among MHCs’ ACEs, PCEs, CS, burnout, and STS were examined. Research questions (RQs) guiding the study were: RQ1 (descriptive): What are the mean scores of MHCs for ACEs, PCEs, CS, burnout, and STS constructs? and RQ2 (regression): To what extent do MHCs’ ACEs, PCEs, gender, race, socioeconomic status, and educational level predict CS, burnout, and STS? Power Analysis The target number of participants for the study was at least N = 138, based on a power analysis. Researchers used G*Power 3.1.9.6 (Faul et al., 2009) to calculate an a priori power analysis with a .05 alpha level (Cohen, 1988, 1992), a medium effect size for multiple R2 of .09 (Cohen, 1988), and a power of .80 (Cohen, 1992). Participants The eligibility criteria for this study were to be a clinical MHC, 18 years or older, who worked 30 hours or more per week in the field of mental health counseling. After soliciting participants nationally through emails, we collected data from 140 participants who met the criteria. MHCs ranged in age from 22 to 72 years old with an average age of 38 (SD = 11.01). Table 1 shows the diverse sample. Slightly more than half (n = 71) identified as female and a little less than half (n = 66) as male. More than three-quarters (n = 108) identified as White. The majority of participants (n = 85) reported their childhood SES as lower or working class, while more than half (n = 78) reported their current social class as middle class. Our sample with predominantly female and predominantly White participants is similar both to known counselor demographics (Norton & Tan, 2019) and to the Felitti et al. (1998) ACEs study. Instrumentation Three instruments with good validity and reliability were used to measure ACEs, PCEs, CS, burnout, and STS. We created a demographic questionnaire to collect information on participants’ identities (e.g., race, gender) and childhood backgrounds (e.g., ACEs, PCEs, SES). Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study Questionnaire The ACE Study Questionnaire (Felitti et al., 1998) is a 10-item survey of the most common examples of childhood abuse and neglect. It was developed out of research that connected childhood trauma to subsequent mental and physical ailments. Subsequent research found good test-retest reliability of the measure in an adult population (Dube et al., 2004; Frampton et al., 2018) and a Cronbach’s alpha score of .78 (Ford et al., 2014). The survey produces self-report scores between 0 and 10. The higher the score, the greater the risk for mental and physical health issues as well as decreased quality of life. Consistent research (e.g., Anda et al., 2006; Dube et al., 2004; Hughes et al., 2017) shows that a score of 4 or more indicates serious risk.
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