The effect of client authoritarianism on client ratings of counseling

Abstract

Seventy-five clients (36 men and 39 women) of three university counseling centers were asked to evaluate their counselors using the Counseling Evaluation Inventory (Linden, Stone, & Shertzer, 1965), and to complete two measures of authoritarianism , the Forced Choice F Scale, Form II (Berkowitz & Wolkon, 1964) and the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale (Rokeach, 1960). The hypothesis tested was that authoritarian clients tend to give unreliable ratings of counseling because they glorify and thus overrate their counselors. Counselor directiveness was held constant in all tests of this hypothesis due to the authoritarian's alleged preference for autocratic and directive authority figures. The 15 counselors who participated in the study rated their own counseling style along the directive-nondirective continuum and, in addition, completed the Forced Choice F Scale and the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale as secondary measures of their directiveness in counseling. Partial correlations were computed to test the hypothesis that client authoritarianism is related to client ratings when the effect of counselor directiveness is held constant. However, the hypothesized relationship was not observed whether client authoritarianism was defined by the client's score on the Forced Choice F Scale or his score on the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, nor whether counselor directiveness was defined as the counselor's own estimate of his directiveness, his score on the Forced Choice F Scale, or his score on the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale. On the other hand, since the reliability (Alpha Coefficient) of the Forced Choice F Scale with the sample under study was only .567, it was concluded that the present study was not an adequate test of the hypothesis. Some evidence was noted which indicated that the hypothesized relationship may well exist, and that it warrants further study. Counselor authoritarianism was significantly and positively correlated with c lie n t ratings and this was true whether client authoritarianism or c lie n t dogmatism was partialed out of the relationship. The conclusion was drawn that all clients, regardless of their standing on authoritarianism or dogmatism, prefer authoritarian counselors..