Confidentiality of Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors: A Survey of Turkish School Counselors

Breaching confidentiality to report students’ risk-taking behaviours to school administrators

“…In the same original study, 'Gender of the student' and 'Age of the student' were also rated as least important factors in deciding whether to breach confidentiality to report risk-taking behaviours to SAs. Furthermore, results are in agreement with those obtained by Sullivan and Moyer (2008) and Sivis-Cetinkaya (2018), where both studies used a similar survey to examine SCs' ratings of the importance of certain factors in deciding whether to breach confidentiality to report risk-taking behaviours to parents. In both studies, 'Protecting the student' received the highest rating, and 'Apparent seriousness of the risk-taking behaviour' was among the top four important factors, while 'Gender of the student' and 'Age of the student' received the lowest ratings.…”

“…Qualitative results obtained from the study indicated that the socio-cultural status of the family, and parents'/family's potential for support regarding the behaviour were mostly cited as additional important factors to be considered in deciding whether to report students' risk-taking behaviours to SAs. Results from a previous study (Sivis-Cetinkaya, 2018) were similar, where participants perceived cultural context of the family, and their potential reactions to the behaviour as additional important factors to be considered in deciding whether to report students' risk-taking behaviours to parents. Similarly, qualitative responses to the open-ended Other factor in the Sullivan and Moyer (2008) study also showed that participants considered family's history of abuse, or the parents' potential for physical abuse as important additional factors.…”

“…The original Moyer et al (2012) study did not report any analysis regarding gender differences, thus there are no previous findings from the original study for comparison. However, results from a previous study by Sivis-Cetinkaya (2018) reported that female participants rated 'Complying with school/district policies' and 'Avoiding legal problems for the adolescent' higher than their male counterparts. Rae et al (2009) also found that male school psychologists were more likely than their female counterparts to report risk-taking behaviours involving alcohol use.…”

“…Empirical research addressing SCs' breach of confidentiality to report students' risk-taking behaviours to SAs is extremely scarce in the international scientific literature. Previous studies investigated reporting of students' risk-taking behaviours to parents (Sivis-Cetinkaya, 2018;Sullivan & Moyer, 2008), or reporting of risk-taking behaviours in general without specifying the recipient of the information (Atanasov, 2016;Bodenhorn, 2006;Lazovsky, 2008;Rae, Sullivan, Razo, & Alba, 2009;Stone & Isaacs, 2002). Few researchers (Kimber & Campbell, 2014;O'Connell, 2012) examined SAs' perceptions of confidentiality, or how SCs perceived SAs in terms of respecting confidentiality between the counsellor and the student (Har & Jusoh, 2015;Lehr, Lehr, & Sumarah, 2007).…”

Improving Guidance and Counselling in Colleges of Education: Perspectives of Teacher Trainees

“…The ERO (2013) and Pybis et al (2012) reported that confidentiality was a factor that militated against effective guidance and counselling in New Zealand and the Wales. Confidentiality is an important principle in building relationship, wherein clients have trust and confidence that the information they provide during therapy will be kept confidentially (Sivis-Cetinkaya, 2019). Ethical principles, particularly on confidentiality, have been discussed extensively in the professional literature including the American Psychological Association [APA] (2017) and Obochi and Nicholas (2018).…”