Students' Ethical Decision‐Making When Considering Boundary Crossings With Counselor Educators

Abstract

Counselor education students (N = 224) rated 16 boundary‐crossing scenarios involving counselor educators. They viewed boundary crossings as unethical and were aware of power differentials between the 2 groups. Next, they rated the scenarios again, after reviewing 1 of 4 ethical informational resources: relevant standards in the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2014), 2 different boundary‐crossing decision‐making models, and a placebo. Although participants rated all resources except the placebo as moderately helpful, these resources had little to no influence on their ethical decision‐making. Only 47% of students in the 2 ethical decision‐making model groups reported they would use the model they were exposed to in the future when contemplating boundary crossings

Power’s influence on boundary-crossings between counselor educators and counselor education students

“…It would be helpful for CEs to understand how power differentials influence boundary-crossing perceptions within the legitimate hierarchy of counselor education. Burns and Cruikshanks (2019) and Burns (2019) used the same 16 boundarycrossing scenarios and the same four ethical-information resources with CEs and CESs to understand how these resources influenced each group when contemplating boundary-crossings with the other group. For this study, I used the ex-post facto data from both prior studies to test differences in original reactions on the 16 boundary-crossing scenarios between CEs and CESs.…”

“…Burns (2019) stated counselor education students were individuals actively taking courses in a CACREP accredited master's graduate program. Burns and Cruikshanks (2019) and Burns (2019) performed power analyses with G*Power using a medium effect size of.25, power level of .80, and alpha of .05 (Faul et al, 2007), which recommended a minimum sample size of 136 for each study. Burns and Cruikshanks (2019) and Burns (2019) selected a medium effect size since average variance was expected and important, practical concerns for the counseling profession were desired (Healey & Hays, 2012).…”

“…Ethical information resources in both studies were defined as resources a CE or CES could use when considering the ethical implications of boundary-crossings with a CE or CES (Burns, 2019;Burns & Cruikshanks, 2019). The data analyses in this study were generated from the raw data of two separate studies ( The ACA Code of Ethics documents CEs' professional responsibilities when working with CESs.…”

“…The instrument used in both studies (Burns, 2019;Burns & Cruikshanks, 2019) was based upon higher education students' identification of five types of interactions occurring between faculty and students: sexual/dating, friendship/social, personal/counseling, business/financial, and professional/academic (Hoppe, 2013). Additionally, the instrument was shaped by four-year colleges' and universities policies' in the United States, the American Association of University Professors (2009, 2015)) policies, the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics, existing research on student reports of boundarycrossings with educators, and Burian and Slimp (2000) suggestion that relationship motives are important factors when considering boundary-crossings.…”

“…Afterward, participants rated the likelihood of using the resource in the future: responding highly likely received a value of 1 and responding highly unlikely received a value of 6. Burns and Cruikshanks (2019) and Burns (2019) checked the data in both studies for outliers by running frequency reports and found no evidence of miscoded data or univariate outliers. Descriptive statistics were obtained from Burns and Cruikshanks (2019) and Burns (2019) to report participant demographics and ratings of the 16 boundary-crossing scenarios for CEs and CESs.…”