COLLEGE STUDENTS' PREFERENCES AND EXPECTANCIES AS TO COUNSELOR CHARACTERISTICS OF AGE, RACE, AND SEX

This study assessed college students' preferences and expectancies relative to selected counselor characteristics (age, race, and sex) and determined which characteristics influence the choice of a counselor for specific concerns and expectancies. The age, race, and sex of the client were also examined as factors that affect subsequent preferences and expectancies. The subjects were 30 undergraduate students from The American University and 30 undergraduate students from Howard University. There were equal numbers (15) of white males, black males, white females, and black females. The subjects were limited to persons who were not presently in counseling. They may have had previous counseling experiences, but that was not a prerequisite. The instruments used were the Preference Questionnaire and the Expectancy Questionnaire. The Preference Questionnaire was developed to determine students' preferences for counselors for specific personal and vocational concerns. The Expectancy Questionnaire was designed to determine how the students believed the counselor would act in a counseling session and what they thought each counselor would be like as a person. Both questionnaires were designed by the researcher using information obtained from previous studies that dealt with preferences and expectancies of college students and clients and altered for this study. The subjects were instructed to indicate a preference of counselor for each of the concerns using an 8-point scale. They indicated their expectancies of the counselors using the same procedure. The stimuli presented in the study were photographs of eight persons (older black female, older white male, younger black female, younger black male, younger white female, younger white male, older black male, and older white female). The younger stimuli were photographs of persons between the ages of 25 and 35, and the older stimuli were photographs of persons between the ages of 45 and 55. Hypotheses One through Six were tested using chi-square test of independence and the data was organized into contingency tables. When the variables were found to be related a contingency coefficient was computed to measure the strength of the relationships. Hypotheses One, Four, and Six were not rejected, and Hypotheses Two, Three, and Five were rejected. These results indicate that the variables, age of the client and both preferred and expected age of the counselor, are independent. The variables, race of the client and both preferred and expected race of the counselor, are not independent. And the variables, sex of the client and expected sex of the counselor, are independent, but the sex of the client and preferred sex of the counselor are not independent relative to specific concerns. Although preferences and expectancies were also noted, they are incidental to the relationship between the variables and not consequences of them. An interpretation and discussion of the results of the study were presented and recommendations were made for further research.