At-risk high school students' preferences for counselor characteristics.

The study of counselor characteristics, especially how these characteristics factor into the helping relationship, has been a topic of much interest for more than two decades. At the inception of such studies, the focus was often on the ethnic variable in the counseling dyad to the exclusion of other, possibly more salient counselor attributes (Atkinson, Wampold, Lowe, Matthews, & Ahn, 1998). Beginning with Atkinson, Furlong, and Poston (1986), however, other within-group variables such as age, gender, attitudes, and values have been included, with emphases on not only physical similarity, but also attitudinal and sociocultural similarities. Regardless of the variables under study, investigations have been based, either implicitly or explicitly, in social psychology research dealing with personal attraction and relationship development. The results of these investigations suggest, among other things, that credibility, attractiveness, and influence are functions of the degree of similarity between source and receiver of a communication. The conclusions drawn by the authors of the extant research suggest that people are attracted into relationships, counseling or otherwise, with those who are similar to them and less attracted to those different from them (Simons, Berkowitz, & Moyer, 1970; Speight & Vera, 1997). Although race was identified as a salient marker of similarity and difference in early studies (Pinchot, Riccio, & Peters, 1975; Riccio & Barnes, 1973; Thompson & Cimbolic, 1978), newer research suggests that a number of characteristics should be considered when participants are asked to determine similarities and differences between themselves and a prospective counselor. Atkinson et al. (1986) was the first study in which methodology similar to the present was utilized. In that study, the authors reported that African-American participants ranked ethnic similarity fifth among counselor characteristics such as education, attitudes and values, personality, sex, socioeconomic status, age, and religion. In a replication and extension of Atkinson et al. (1986), Ponterotto, Alexander, and Hinkston (1988) concluded that preference for a counselor of the same ethnicity ranked second compared to the same counselor variables. The authors presented a possible explanation of the difference in rankings as a function of the variance between the respective cultures and environments of the participants, but arrived at the same general conclusion as Atkinson et al. (1986), that the participants preferred counselors similar to themselves. Atkinson, Poston, Furlong, and Mercado (1989), using similar methods, found that Asian-American and White participants ranked counselor ethnicity seventh and Mexican-American participants ranked same ethnicity sixth among the previously identified counselor characteristics. In the fourth study from which pertinent precedent is drawn (Bennett & BigFoot-Sipes, 1991), it was reported that NativeAmerican participants ranked same ethnicity second for academic problems and fourth for personal problems. BigFoot-Sipes, Dauphinais, LaFromboise, Bennett, and Rowe (1992) replicated the study with Native-American junior high and high school students and found that same ethnicity ranked higher in their sample than in other research conducted with college students. The general conclusions derived from these studies support the hypothesis that participants of various races and ethnicities prefer counselors possessing characteristics similar to themselves, but that similarity is not necessarily defined by race or ethnicity alone. Much support has been garnered for the similarity and repulsion hypothesis as it applies to the characteristics deemed desirable in a counselor. So much so that the utility of yet another study might be questioned. In spite of this observation, it should be noted that no studies have been conducted with at-risk high school students, nor have there been any studies which examined the student-school counselor relationship. …