TPC Journal-Vol 10- Issue 3-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 3 341 counselor education applicants in the admissions process at one institution. The remaining 66% of the participants were field site supervisors. Because field site supervisors were involved in gatekeeping, attending training in dispositional assessment was natural to their role as internship site supervisors. Measure: PDCA-RA The PDCA-RA was developed on the basis of the Professional Disposition Competence Assessment (PDCA; Garner et al., 2016). The PDCA, a dispositional gatekeeping tool, was revised to the Professional Disposition Competence Assessment-Revised (PDCA-R) after several rounds of use and with feedback from expert panels (Freeman & Garner, 2017). Advice from legal counsel was also reflected in the revision of the PDCA to the PDCA-R. The PDCA-R was originally used for both gatekeeping and admissions purposes, but it was determined that the PDCA-R was best used for gatekeeping, not for admissions screening, because the tool implied that the rater had prior knowledge of the student. Because this is often not the case in admissions screening, the PDCA-RA was developed. The PDCA, PDCA-R, and PDCA-RA were conceptualized and developed through a comprehensive review of the literature, several rounds of field testing, and adjustments from expert faculty panels at two institutions. In addition to counseling literature on impairment and expert panel feedback, the Five-Factor Model, often referred to as the “Big Five” (Costa & McCrae, 1992), influenced three of the nine dispositional items. The Five-Factor Model consists of five personality traits consistently associated with positive mental health, academic success, and healthy habits and attitudes across the life span: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness. The PDCA-RA dispositions are identical to the PDCA-R, with the exception of the disposition of Ethics. Ethics was removed from the PDCA-RA because the description assumed knowledge of professional ethical standards, a doubtful expectation for program applicants with no prior training in counseling. The behavioral descriptions in the PDCA-RA were narrowed so they described only those behaviors that can be observed in admissions interviews with no prior knowledge of the applicants. In addition, the rubric item descriptions were shortened to align with the practical context of brief (20- to 30-minute) admissions interviews in which there may be limited time for in-depth assessment. If dispositions are thought of as traits, as per the definition of dispositions in the CACREP glossary (CACREP, 2015), the PDCA-RA is not technically directly measuring dispositions. Based upon advice from legal counsel, as well as the practicality of assessing applicants during short admissions interviews, the PDCA-RA assessed behaviors associated with dispositions and not the actual dispositions. Behaviors identified for each disposition can be observed during a short admissions interview, whereas personality traits would require a more in-depth assessment approach, one that counselor educators fear might be found legally problematic (Freeman et al., 2019; Schuermann et al., 2018). The nine dispositions assessed in terms of observable behaviors via the rubric are Conscientiousness, Coping and Self-Care, Openness, Cooperativeness, Moral Reasoning, Interpersonal Skills, Cultural Sensitivity, Self-Awareness, and Emotional Stability. Each disposition in the PDCA-RA is rated on a scale of three levels— developing , meets expectation , and above expectation . The PDCA-RA is described in more detail in a manual that includes the tools as well as three suggested admissions questions for each of the nine dispositions (Freeman & Garner, 2017). The measure of internal consistency for faculty ratings of the original PDCA rubric was a Cronbach’s alpha estimated at .94 (Garner et al., 2016). Cronbach’s alpha for self-ratings was .82, and Cronbach’s alpha for peer ratings was .89. The straightforward modifications from the original PDCA to the PDCA-RA were minimal and unlikely to significantly affect these measures of internal consistency.