SUGISAKAMASANORI

Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life
Vol. 9(1); June (2022), pp. 54–58
ISSN (Online): 2352-6386; ISSN (Print): 2405-9021
https://alife-robotics.org/jrnal.html

Research Article

A Study of Factors Affecting Acceptance of Counseling Service
System: Service Users’ Perspective
Hsiu-Hao Liu

The Ph.D. Program in Business and Operations Management, College of Management, Chang Jung Christian University, No.1, Changda Rd., Gueiren
District, Tainan City, 711301, Taiwan

ARTIC LE INFO
Article History
Received 30 October 2020
Accepted 11 April 2022

Keywords
Usage Intention
Qualitative ResearchCounseling Service System
Teacher-Counselor

ABS TRACTAs the most important case management system in school counseling works, the counselingservice system must meet the needs and expectations of the school teacher-counselors (the mainusers). Semi-structured interviews were used to interview school teacher-counselors who haveexperience in using the system in Tainan. The data are recorded and semantically analyzed after
the interview, and the critical factors that affect the system acceptance of the school teachercounselors are summarized. The conclusion was to discuss the implications of this research andto suggest several future research issues.
© 2022 The Author. Published by Sugisaka Masanori at ALife Robotics Corporation Ltd
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

1. Introduction
usage intention under different background changes.
Through further analysis, it is found that the two aspects,
perceived usefulness and usage attitude, affect thesystem usage intention.
Based on the research background mentioned above, itshows that the viewpoints between system designers
and users are very different, and user experience is oneof the important factors affecting system design [3].
Therefore, this research aims to explore the criticalfactors that affect the system acceptance of teachercounselors by qualitative research methods, and provide
suggestions for relevant agencies to improve the system.

Case management is a work method or process forproviding the services that clients need in an integrated,
effective and efficient manner [1]. The counselingservice system is the most important case management
tool for school counseling works. In addition to daily
counseling affairs, the school teacher-counselors use thesystem to record the background information,
counseling records, referrals, and other operations of thecase. However, the system design at this stage cannot berecognized by most of the teacher-counselors, so it does
not give the expected help to the counseling works [2],and also goes against the original intention of the systemdesign.
Researchers have used self-made questionnaires in theprevious studies to understand the current status ofteacher-counselors’ use of the counseling service
system [2]. Obtained the result that the teachercounselors have low system satisfaction and systemCorresponding author’s E-mail: harry2356969@gmail.com

2. BackgroundThe school teacher-counselors collects case data in theschool, and the obtained information can be input into
the system and then managed by the Tainan Students54

Guidance and Counseling Center. The functional
connection planning is as Figure 1.
User Login

Instant Message

Individualized
Intervention

Resource
Integration
Application

Other Services
Application

Service Time
Inquiry andConfirmation

Figure 1 The main functional items of the counseling service system (Teacher-counselors)
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is avalidated model that can effectively explain therelationship between usage attitudes and usage intention[4,5]. Referring to previous studies, the usage intentionof the counseling service system could be effectively
predicted by perceived usefulness and usage attitudes,
but it was also found that system quality and perceived
ease of use also have a high positive correlation withusage intention [2]. Therefore, this study uses fivedimensions of system quality, system response time,perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and usage
attitude to compile a semi-structured questionnaire, fora more in-depth exploration of the actual use experienceof the teacher-counselors.

3.2

In the present study, purposive sampling was adopted,
and "information-rich cases" were selected as research
participants. A total of four "information-rich cases"
were selected.
The selection criteria for the participants in this study
are as follows:
Who are full-time teachers in Tainan Elementary
Schools (including public and private).
Who have consulting-related backgrounds andstill using the counseling service system.
Who are willing to share personal experiences
related to research topics.
The researcher contacted the potential participants
through his workplace, and a total of four current fulltime school teacher-counselors who meet the selection
criteria and are willing to accept the interviews wereinvited. Their seniority ranged from three to five years.
The researcher completed the interviews in November
2020.

3. Research Methods
3.1

ParticipantResearch Design

The structure of qualitative interview questions can bedivided into: 1. Structured interviews, also known as
standardized interviews, refer to the interview contentand questions prepared in advance; 2. Unstructuredinterviews, also known as non-standardized interviews,
refer to the undeveloped interview topics, from thefocus of the research participants. Questions are asked
according to the needs of the interview situation; 3.
Semi-structured interviews stand between structured
and unstructured ones. The interview content isprepared in advance, and adjusted according to thesubsequent situations [6,7].
The present study adopts semi-structured face-to-faceformal interviews. Through one-to-one in-depth
interviews with research participants, the content anddata of the interviews are analyzed, reviewed,aggregated, and summarized to determine thedimensions of critical factors that affect the system
acceptance.

3.3

Research Tools

Based on the researcher’s previous questionnaire, thepresent study focuses on an in-depth exploration of thecritical factors of the system acceptance of the teachercounselors.
The interview content is divided into two parts as below:
Explore the main motivations and functions ofusing the system.
Explore the attraction and resistance factors ofusing the system.
3.4

55

Data analysis

which is the part of emergency intervention in school
services. Then, (the psychiatrist in the school) hereminded us that we must enter the system, and thenmake such an application." (B001)"If you want to transfer the secondary prevention caseto the tertiary prevention. (the Student CounselingCenter) They stipulate that there must be a record which
is uploaded." (C002)
Secondly, the background variables of the teachercounselors are also one of the factors that affect theintention of using the system. Three of the participants
thought that the usage frequency and the average timeof each using the system would affect the usageintention because they may become more proficient or
unsatisfied as they learn more about the functions of thesystem.
"The reason of the frequency of using the system ismore relevant to the reason of the average time of using
the system. Those who use it more frequently should
know more about the advantages and disadvantages ofit. If there are many disadvantages, the users will be lesssatisfied. On the contrary, if there are many advantages,
the users will be more satisfied." (A005)
Moreover, two of the participants believed that age orseniority is also one of the factors that affect the usageintention. Senior or elder teachers may be less familiar
with operating information systems.
"In contrast to myself filling in (the system), our seniordirector or team leader may be less familiar with using
computer and it will take them more time to do that."(D002)
Finally, we will discuss the participants’ positive andnegative opinions on the system. As for the attraction
factor, two of the participants suggest that the use ofsystems would help their work. This is a Perceived
Usefulness dimension.
"In order to write more detailed information down, youmust spend more time to do some case review before
you upload it (the Case Record). I think this is helpful
for self-organizing and the case." (B005)
Another participant indicates that the system responded
smoothly, which is the system response time dimension.
For the resistance factor, three of the participants said
that the review mechanism of the system is suspicious.
One of the participants reflected the inconvenience ofthe countdown design and the lack of pre-teaching andAhead of the interview, an interview outline should be
drawn up according to the research question and thepurpose of the study. The researcher sends the interview
outline to the participants to discuss the direction andthe content of the interview firstly.
After the interview, the recording files of eachparticipant were compiled into a verbatim manuscript,
the key points were sorted out and analyzed, and theelements and the core themes were summarized. Finally,
the interview interpretation was written, and theinterview interpretation was sent to the participants. In
addition, the "Research Participant Interview
Interpretation Confirmation Reply Form" was attached.
The participants were asked to check the correction of
the researcher's interpretation of the interview content,
and to correct any doubtful points for further discussion
and clarification.
For the purpose of interpreting the experience and theinformation of the participants, the original interviews
were interspersed with the description of the thesis
when writing the paper. When quoting the content of theinterview, if the entire conversation is quoted, it will beframed with quotation mark. The source of the interview
content is marked after the quoted paragraph, such as
A001: the first English letter is the respondent code, andthe last three numbers are the paragraph number of theinterviewed content.
In quoting the entire conversation, to make the theme
clearer, ellipsis will be used when some interview
sentences are deleted. In order to facilitate the smoothreading of the quotation, it will be indicated byparentheses as the text added by the researcher [6,8].
4. Research Results
The main purpose of the study is to explore the criticalfactors of the system acceptance of teacher-counselors.
First of all, it can be known from the interview content
that the main reasons of the participants using thesystem are due to the requirements or regulations. The
system is only used without choice, and the case records
are passively registered when the cases needs to bereferred.
"It was because the Student Counseling Center asked us
to attend a meeting, and then announced that from now
on we will use and fill in the online record form." (A001)"…Because the incident itself was a crisis at that time,
we had to ask for the tertiary prevention psychiatrist,56

behavior may cause personal information leakage. Thisis the usage attitudes dimension.
"As far as I know, this system is no longer specificallymanaged by certain protection, especially his databasefor storing data. I heard that there is no specific person
manages it. Then how do we know that after we fill in
the information of these case, this will not be leaked? Or
it will not be used?" (A009)"As for the confidentiality of this (case records), it
should be the unit that requires us to report. They must
be themselves, and they must be ethically confidentialand protected. Since they have designed this (system),
there should be a mechanism." (D012)

post-assistance in the system. All of the above can besummarized in the system quality dimension.
"…These team leaders, directors, and principals are able
to read and reached those cases (records), …, I just think
why the director, group leader, and principal were alsoable to see it. If it's just a review, then what is thepurpose of seeing these things, and what is the purposeof these case records and case conceptualizations?"(D010)"I think the countdown timer is very unfriendly, …,Then again, for the teacher who uses this system for thefirst time, I think he is also relatively unfriendly because
he only introduced the system to the teacher-counselors
and tell us how to use the system at the beginning, andthen I reviewed it again. He actually put a teaching
manual on it, but the content is trivial and complicated."
The four participants agreed that the system cannot
protect the safety of case data and that the uploading
Dimensions

Demographic
Characteristics

Criteria

1.
2.

3.

Age andSeniority
SystemUsing
Frequency
The
Average
Using Time

5. Discussions and Suggestions
Based on the above, the researcher sorted out the criticalfactors of the system acceptance of the teachercounselors. There are five main dimensions and elevencriteria (Table 1)

System Quality

SystemResponse Time

Ensure that theaudit mechanism isreasonable andconfidential
2. Provide sufficient
time to fill in
3. Provide adequate
pre-training andpost-event
assistance1.

1.

Smoothsystem
response

Perceived
Usefulness
1.

2.

Provide aunifiedfile format
Contributeto caseanalysis

Usage Attitudes
Have a goodmanagement
authority
design2. Ensure theconfidentialityof caseinformationand counsellingrecords1.

Table 1 The structure of the critical factors for the counseling service system acceptance
Finally, during the interview, many participants
mentioned their concerns about participating in thisstudy. Compared with other teachers, the teachercounselors form a more closed group. If the upper-levelauthorities use this study to investigate the identity ofthe participants, it may affect the rights of manyteachers. Therefore, it is recommended that researchers
pay more attention to the research description andconfidentiality when conducting closed groupinterviews so that participants can express their feelings
without scruples.

Compared with the results of previous questionnaire
surveys, the usage attitude has been mentioned all thetime. Research conducted in the past also confirm that
there is a positive correlation between the usage attitude
and the usage intention [9,10]. It shows that the usage
attitude dimension require highly attention.
In the future, this study will continue to extend the scopeof research to practitioners in different backgrounds,
such as junior and high school teacher-counselors, andcounseling psychologists, to enrich the five dimensions.

57L.G. Wallace, S.D. Sheetz, The adoption ofsoftware measures: a technology acceptancemodel (TAM) perspective, Inform. Manage. 51(2014), 249–259.
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[5]Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
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Authors Introduction

Mr. Hsiu-Hao Liu

counseling.

He received his Master’s degreefrom the Department of Psychology,
National Chung Cheng University,
Taiwan in 2015. He is currently aDoctoral course student in Chang
Jung Christian University, Taiwan.
His research interests include theapplicationofinformation
technology to education and58