TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 1

28 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 1 No study has examined what prelicensed counselors perceive as salient in their clinical supervision experience and the degree to which they are willing to discuss concerns with their supervisors. Postgraduate supervision is critically important to a counselor’s developmental growth (Henriksen et al., 2019). Prelicensed counselors are mandated to receive clinical supervision (Henriksen et al., 2019), which means that supervisee intentional nondisclosure is a relevant issue. As such, an investigation of supervisee intentional nondisclosure in a sample of postgraduate, prelicensed counselors is needed. Therefore, the aim of our study was to examine prelicensed counselors’ self-reported incidents of intentional nondisclosure in clinical supervision. Specifically, our investigation was guided by two research questions: (a) What is the frequency of intentional nondisclosure in clinical supervision as reported by prelicensed counselors, and (b) Which concerns do prelicensed counselors find most difficult to discuss with clinical supervisors? Method Participants and Procedures Participants in the current study were prelicensed counselors pursuing full, independent licensure as professional counselors. We aimed to recruit a nationally representative sample, so we obtained mailing addresses for persons pursuing licensure in two states in each of the five Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) regions. Specifically, we solicited participation from prelicensed counselors in Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Washington. We randomly selected up to 150 names from each state. After eliminating and replacing unverifiable mailing addresses, we identified 1,347 potential participants. We first received IRB approval and then solicited participation by mailing paper-and-pencil survey packets to the potential participants. We asked participants to anonymously respond about their current, licensed clinical supervisor. Participants returned the surveys to the authors using a prepaid envelope. Of the 1,347 mailed packets, 330 packets (24.5%) were “returned to sender” and never received by the potential participants. Of the remaining 1,017 packets distributed to potential participants, 109 survey packets were returned. However, two participants’ responses were incomplete and subsequently removed. The number of usable packets was 107, resulting in a response rate of 10.5%. This response rate, although low, is consistent with previous survey research employing a mailing recruitment strategy (Barden et al., 2017). Because data collection was anonymous, we are unable to identify the state of origin for participants included in our sample. The age of participants ranged from 24 to 67 ( M = 38.79, SD = 11.20). The majority of participants identified as White (83.2%), while eight participants identified as Hispanic (7.5%), five participants identified as African American/Black (4.7%), two participants identified as Asian (1.9%), two participants identified as Multiracial (1.9%), and one participant did not respond to this item (0.9%). Eighty-five participants identified as female (79.4%), 21 participants identified as male (19.6%), and one participant identified as non-binary (0.9%). The demographic characteristics of the participants in the current study are comparable to counseling professionals in general (CACREP, 2018). On average, the participants received 64.73 ( SD = 29.79) minutes of clinical supervision per week. Finally, 56 participants were assigned a supervisor at their job (51.4%), 28 paid for supervision from someone who did not work at their employment site (26.4%), 17 chose a supervisor at their place of employment (15.9%), and six participants indicated other (5.6%; e.g., free supervision from someone outside their job).