Effects of behavioral (reinforcement) and advice-giving counseling on information-seeking behavior.

Abstract

A 2 X 3 factorial nested design compared the differential effectiveness of reinforcement and persuasive advice-giving to increase information seeking. Two counselors provided each treatment. A control (nonactive) group was included. The two experimental groups were scheduled for two counseling interviews 1 week apart. A third structured interview was scheduled 2 weeks later so all subjects could report their information-seeking behavior outside the interviews. The results demonstrated that behavioral reinforcement counseling is superior to advice-giving on four criterion measures: (a) counselees exhibited significantly higher frequency of verbal informationseeking behavior in the interview; (6) they engaged more in eventual information-seeking activities outside the interview (frequency and variety); (c) verbal and "eventual" information-seeking behaviors were significantly and positively correlated (generalization effect); and (d) student/counselor talk ratio was significantly higher.1 Based on the first author's PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota; related paper was presented at the meeting of the American Personnel and Guidance Association, Atlantic City, April 1971.2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Makram Samaan,

Verbal and nonverbal behavior in judgments of facilitative conditions.

“…A possible answer to the problem of appropriate verbal conveyance can be sought in the actual verbal techniques employed by various counselors. Numerous studies have been conducted using counselor restatement (Hill & Gormally, 1977;Lavelle, 1977;Snyder, 1945) and reflective (Barnabei, Cormier, & Nye, 1974;Bergman, 1951;Helner & Jessell, 1974;Hill & Gormally, 1977;Lavelle, 1977), interpretive (Helner & Jessell, 1974;Lavelle, 1977), confrontive (Barnabei et al, 1974;Kaul, Kaul, & Bednar, 1973;Reece & Whitman, 1962), and supportive (Knight & Bair, 1976;Samaan & Parker, 1973) statements. _The findings, to date, do not clarify which technique or combination of techniques produce client change.…”

Effects of role and gender mix on verbal communication modes.

“…It was hypothesized that subjects asked to act as friends would give more advice than those acting as counselors, while subjects playing the role of counselor would use the reflective and interpretive modes more frequently. These predictions were based on recent findings indicating that (a) advice-giving is relatively rare in many types of counseling and, in fact, may not lead to desired behavior change (Lazarus, 1966;Samaan & Parker, 1973) and (b) reflective responses are not only infrequent in natural conversations among friends, but they are also viewed by college students as less desirable than more directive modes (Heilbrun, 1970;Libow & Doty, 1976;Reisman & Yamokoski, 1974). 281…”

Progress and Prospects in the Evaluation of Career Assistance

“…An example of these later studies (Babcock & Kaufman, 1976) compared individual counseling to a seven-session career course using self and career knowledge and planfulness as outcomes. Among the gains from these second phase studies were a significant increase in the number of studies; rigorous literary reviews of, and recommendations for, the increasing body of research (Myers, 1971); the evaluation of manualized treatments (Bergland & Lundquist, 1975; Knickerbocker & Davidshofer, 1978); the use of computer-assisted interventions (Cochran, Hoffman, Strand, & Warren, 1977; Maola & Kane, 1976); and a more sophisticated array of outcome measures involving multiple domains such as information seeking and exploration (Samaan & Parker, 1973). Overall, Phase II studies’ outcome gains appeared to be greater than in Phase I studies, occasionally exceeding one SD of gain.…”