TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 2-FULL ISSUE

230 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 2 For counselor educators and supervisors training beginning counselors, this study suggests the importance of increased awareness of their own attitudes toward individuals reporting AOD use because of the effects of internalized public stigma, which increases maladaptive coping skills such as treatment avoidance (Crowe et al., 2016) and AOD use (Etesam et al., 2014). To illustrate, counselor educators and supervisors may ask beginning counselors to reflect on their personal beliefs regarding seeking psychological help and individuals with substance use issues, as well as how these beliefs may have been learned based on public perceptions or knowledge of information regarding substance use. Classroom strategies that encourage reflection and increase an ethic of care may address previous findings of implicit bias, internalized negative public attitudes, or stigmatizing behaviors by health professionals that lower positive attitudes toward psychological help seeking for individuals with substance use issues (Ford, 2011). Lastly, counselor educators can further promote beginning counselors’ advocacy competencies through creative and engaging assignments that challenge students to develop ways of encouraging help seeking in the general public and dispel public myths about substance use or the stigma of seeking psychological help—for instance, the creation of fact and resource brochures distributed within the community. This study also further supported the use of MTurk for reliable and valid data in an accessible community sample (Kim & Hodgins, 2017). The anonymity, convenience, and incentive offered to participants via MTurk while reporting behaviors stigmatized by the general public may contribute to the gathering of reliable and valid data (Kim & Hodgins, 2017). Additionally, this study supports MTurk as a tool to identify clinical populations with alcohol use problems (Al-Khouja & Corrigan, 2017). The use of MTurk as a sampling method is currently limited in counselor education literature and may lead to more representative samples that resemble targeted community populations beyond the commonly accessed university samples by researchers. Limitations This study has several limitations. First, although the study used a community sample, the sample included only individuals accessible through MTurk, and research on the representativeness of samples drawn from MTurk is limited (Al-Khouja & Corrigan, 2017; Kim & Hodgins, 2017). The sample employed through MTurk was gathered widely from the community and previous studies have shown evidence of validity and reliability of MTurk as a recruiting tool with substance-using populations (Kim & Hodgins, 2017). However, because MTurk uses an online platform, it is subject to the same classic limitations associated with online data collection, such as representativeness and technical difficulties (Granello & Wheaton, 2004). Therefore, the current sample showed diversity among participants, but researchers could not confirm whether MTurk samples were representative of the populations from which they were drawn. Specifically, the sample consisted primarily of White and Asian participants, thereby limiting generalizability to people of other race/ethnicity classifications. Another limitation of this study is the absence of inattentive screening items. Additionally, this investigation used correlational data analysis methods to examine the proposed model; therefore, the findings could not indicate causality among the variables (Gall et al., 2007). Finally, although we wanted to know about stigma related to SUDs, we used scales that were designed to measure stigma in general. Although all instruments demonstrated strong psychometric properties in the current study, it is worth noting that stigma of SUDs may be different from stigma related to mental health concerns with no substance use. Future Research Considering the limitations, these findings provide significant implications for future research. We suggest replication of the present findings on future groups through the MTurk platform and other sampling methods (Al-Khouja & Corrigan, 2017). Additionally, researchers are encouraged