A Comparison of American and Chinese Counseling Students’ Perceptions of Counseling
University of National Changhua
Georgia University
Abstract
This study assessed the differences between the ways that counseling students in two different countries. Taiwan and the United States, perceived counseling. The evaluative and potency scales of a semantic differential were used to compare the attitudes of these students related to counseling and certain counseling related variables. One finding of this study was that the Chinese students evaluated counseling, group counseling and counselors more positively than the American students while the American students rated the potency of all of these concepts higher than the Chinese students.
Clients' perceptions of counseling are affected by their upbringing and culture. Recognition of the effects of culture raises questions concerning the degree of commonality there is in the views that different cultural groups have of counseling and whether or not differences exist between these group's perceptions of counseling. Research is needed to investigate whether the expectations that the people of different countries have about counseling are determined by the cultures in which they live or whether there are common expectations that people have about counseling regardless of their cultural upbringing. This type of research is becoming more relevant because of the increased contact that people from different cultures have with one another in today's world and because of the increasing awareness of the mental health needs of international students (Fouad, 1991; Pedersen, 1991; Siegel, 1991) and other culturally different persons living both in the United States and other countries.
Many countries other than the United States have developed counseling services in school, agency and private settings; how
well do models of counseling developed in the United States apply in other countries? Many writers have asserted that American counseling models may not apply as well in some other cultures as these models apply in the United States because of the cultural differences that exist between Americans and people of different cultural backgrounds (Patterson, 1986; Sander & Sander, 1985; Sue, 1971). For instance, Mau and Jepsen (1988) have reported that Chinese students were less willing to seek out counseling services than American students. The ways that the people who live in different cultures perceive counseling can be understood by performing research on the attitudes of students who are interested in counseling and who plan to enter the counseling profession. It can be assumed that these students have at least some knowledge about what counseling entails. If the attitudes that counseling students in different cultures have about counseling are different, then certain inferences might be made about how the attitudes of others who live in these cultures are different.
Previous research has demonstrated that there are certain differences that exist between the attitudes that Americans and Chinese have about counseling. For instance, research has shown that Chinese students preferred older counselors (Mau & Jepsen, 1988) and preferred directive counseling approaches which provide a discernible structure (Exum & Lau, 1988) more than American students. It was additionally found that Chinese students responded positively to counseling if counselors interpreted the meaning of material to them and helped them to find concrete solutions to problems more than American students (Exum & Lau, 1988). Likewise, Chinese students placed a greater emphasis on competency oriented values than did American-students (Lau, 1988). These studies all demonstrate that Chinese students may have different goals for counseling than American students.
Whereas many of these studies have assessed how the attitudes of Chinese graduate students compare with the attitudes of American graduate students, none of these studies compared the attitudes that American and Chinese graduate counseling students have of counseling. In previous studies that compared the attitudes of Chinese and American students toward counseling, the Chinese students are likely to have scored differently than the Americans because they were less familiar with the goals of counseling than the American students. It is possible that Chinese students who gain knowledge about the goals of counseling will perceive counseling more similarly to Americans than Chinese students who lack this knowledge. On the other hand, it is also possible that Chinese culture inculcates values that conflict with the goals of Western models of counseling.
This study utilized a semantic differential technique to compare how graduate counseling students in Taiwan and America perceive counseling and counseling related variables.
Method
Settings and Population
Thirty-eight Chinese Masters' degree students from two universities in Taiwan (the Republic of China) and 35 American Masters' degree students from one university in the Southeastern United States were used as the subjects for this research. All of the participants of this study were enrolled in counseling Masters' programs in Taiwan or in the United States. The subjects from Taiwan included about two thirds of the Chinese students in Taiwan who were enrolled in Masters' counseling programs the year that the study was undertaken. All of the research participants in America and Taiwan were voluntary participants. The Chinese and American subjects were matched with one another as closely as possible on the variables of age and type of counseling program.
Twelve of the American subjects were males and 23 were females whereas six of the Chinese subjects were males and 31 were females. The mean age of the American subjects was 28 years and the mean age of the Chinese subjects was 26 years; five of the Chinese subjects were married and eight of the American Subjects were married. These same subjects were used as the subjects for another study that was performed by these authors (Page & Cheng, in press); more data on the background of the subjects can be found in this article.
Instrument
A semantic differential was used to assess the attitudes of the Chinese and American subjects. All of the students in Taiwan spoke and read English, so the semantic differential was administered to them in English. The semantic differential was first developed by Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (1957) and has been used in a variety of settings and with different populations (Kerlinger, 1964).
The semantic differential technique is a reliable and valid means to assess the attitudes of people in different cultures. This instrument has been factor analyzed with Japanese university students and with Japanese public workers as subjects and was found to have the same three factors (evaluative, activity and potency) that were obtained with American subjects (Kudoh & Matsumoto, 1985). The semantic differential has also been used to determine how the members of 30 different countries around the world rated 820 concepts on the evaluative, potency and activity scales (Tzeng & Everett, 1985). This research found the semantic differential to be a valid way of assessing the attitudes of people who lived in these different countries, partly because different cultural groups could interpret the concepts of the semantic differential according to their own perceptions and frames of references.
Ten of the standard evaluative and potency adjective pairs that were obtained from a factor analysis performed by Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (1957) were used to assess subjects' attitudes about the concepts presented on the semantic differential. The adjective pairs were good-bad, feminine-masculine, painful-pleasurable, serious-humorous, beautiful-ugly, light-heavy, unimportant-important, strong-weak, positive-negative, and soft-hard. The concepts that were used for this research included Counseling, Group Counseling, Counselors, Awareness and Personal Involvements. The concepts of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors were used because of their direct relevance to counseling; the evaluative scales provided information about how the subjects thought about these concepts while the potency scales provided information about how the subjects felt about these concepts. The concepts of Awareness and Personal Involvements were used because the goals of counseling can be conceptualized as being to help people to become more aware of themselves and other people and to help people to become more involved interpersonally (Page, 1983; Peris, Hefferline & Goodman, 1951; Raskin & Rogers, 1989).
Procedure
A semantic differential was administered to all of the individuals in Taiwan and in the United States who were the subjects of this research. One person administered the semantic differential to the American subjects and two people at different universities administered the instrument to the subjects in Taiwan. All of the subjects were told that the results obtained from individuals would be kept confidential. The Chinese subjects indicated that they did not have many difficulties reading or understanding the English terms on the semantic differential and that when they did have difficulties, they were able to check their dictionaries to understand difficult words.
Statistics
The statistics that were computed for this research included three MANOVA's. Means and standard deviations were obtained for both the Chinese and American subjects on each of the evaluative and potency scales for all of the concepts presented on the semantic differential.
One of the MANOVA's that was computed for this research analyzed the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling (the counseling-related variables) as the six dependent variables and country (Chinese and American) as the independent variable. A second MANOVA used the evaluative and potency scales of Awareness and Personal Involvements (the goals of counseling) as the four dependent variables and country as the independent variable.
A third MANOVA used the discrepancy scores of the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling (evaluative scale scores minus potency scale scores) as the three dependent variables and country as the independent variable. The reason for using these discrepancy scores was because these scores showed how far apart the Chinese and Americans were in the ways they rated the evaluative and potency scales of these concepts. These differences gave an indication about how far apart the thoughts (shown by the evaluative scores) and the feelings (shown by the potency scores) of the Chinese and American subjects were. Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (1957) have described the ways that the differences between the evaluative and potency scales of different concepts can be analyzed in their book The Measurement of Meaning. The readers can refer to this book to see how the discrepancy scores between the evaluative and potency scales, or visa versa, of different concepts can be used.
Results
The results (see Table 1) that were obtained from computing the MANOVA that used country as the independent variable and the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors as the dependent variables showed that the American subjects rated the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors, considered together, differently than the Chinese subjects (F 6,66) = 3.85, p=.00). When the six dependent variables were considered separately, significant differences were found between the ratings of the American and Chinese subjects on all of the potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors, while no differences were found between the ratings of the American and Chinese subjects on any of the evaluative scales of these concepts. When the means of the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors were reviewed (see Table 2), it was found that the Americans rated the potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors higher than the Chinese. However, the Chinese rated the evaluative scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors higher than the Americans.
Table 1
Manova comparing scores of Chinese and Americans on the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling
__________________________________________________
UNIVARIATE F TESTS
VARIABLE SS DF MS F p
CounselingE 12.01 1 12.0 0.82 .36
ERROR 1038.61 71 14.62
CounselingP 182.03 1 182.03 15.79 0.00*
ERROR 818.48 71 11.52
CounselorsE 31.29 1 31.29 1.83 0.17
ERROR 1208.21 71 17.01
CounselorsP 100.13 1 100.13 11.86 0.00*
ERROR 599.18 71 8.43
Group CounE 29.83 1 29.83 1.89 0.17
ERROR 1118.05 71 15.74
Group CounP 142.53 1 142.53 12.38 0.00*
ERROR 817.41 71 11.51
____________________________________________________
MULTIVARIATE TEST STATISTICS
F = 3.854 DF = 6, 66 p = 0.00*
*p<.05
Table 2
Means and standard deviations for evaluative and potency scales of Awareness, Personal Involvements, Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors ____________________________________________________
CounselingE Group Counseling
CounselingP Group CounselingP
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Chinese 27.52 3.53 19.21 3.37 26.73 4.37 19.63 3.62
Americans 26.71 4.11 22.37 3.42 25.45 3.47 22.42 3.12
CounselorsE CounselorsP
Chinese 28.71 4.20 18.68 3.04
Americans 27.40 4.03 21. 02 2.74
____________________________________________________
AwarenessE AwarenessP Personal InvE PersonalInvP
Chinese 28.00 3.60 21.71 3.74 26.05 4.37 19.15 3.55
Americans 27.34 3.59 23.05 2.89 27.71 3.71 20.28 3.55
Chinese n=38 Americans n=35
The results (see Tables 3 and 4) that were obtained from computing the MANOVA that used country as the independent variable and the discrepancy scores (evaluative score minus potency score) of Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling as the dependent variables showed that the Chinese subjects had higher discrepancy scores on all these concepts than the American subjects. This was true when the concepts were looked at together (F [3,69] = 4.86, p = .00) or individually for the Chinese and American subjects.
Table 3
MANOVA comparing evaluative and potency discrepancy scores of Chinese and Americans on Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors
____________________________________________________
UNIVARIATE F TESTS
VARIABLE SS DF MS F p
Counseling 287.57 1 287.57 11.85 00.0*
ERROR 1722.09 71 24.25
Counselors 243.37 1 243.37 8.84 00.0*
ERROR 1953.14 71 27.50
Group Counseling 302.79 1 302.79 10.10 00.0*
ERROR 2128.55 71 29.98
MULTIVARIATE TEST STATISTICS
F = 4.864 DF = 3 69 PROB = 0.00*
____________________________________________________
*p<.05
Table 4
Means and standard deviations of discrepancy scores of Chinese and Americans for Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling
____________________________________________________
Counseling Counselors Group Counseling
M SD M SD M SD
Chinese 8 .31 5.67 10.02 6.02 7.10 6.66
Americans 4.34 3.95 6.37 4.23 3.02 3.70
____________________________________________________
Chinese n=38 Americans n=35
When the means of the evaluative and potency scales of Awareness and Personal Involvements were reviewed (see Table 5), ft was found that the Americans rated the evaluative and potency scales of Personal Involvements and the potency scale of Awareness higher than the Chinese. The Chinese rated the evaluative scale of Awareness higher than the Americans.
Table 5
Manova comparing scores of Chinese and Americans on the evaluative and potency scales of Awareness and Personal Involvements
____________________________________________________
UNIVARIATE F TESTS
VARIABLE SS DF MS F p
AwarenessE 7.8 1 7.8 9.60 0.43
ERROR 919.88 71 12.95
AwarenessP 33.03 1 33.03 2.91 0.09
ERROR 803.70 71 11.32
Personal InvE 50.30 1 50.30 3.03 0.08
ERROR 1177.03 71 16.57
Personal InvP 23.17 1 23.17 1.83 0.18
ERROR 896.19 71 12.62
MULTIVARIATE TEST STATISTICS
F = 2.643 DF = 4, 68 P =0.04*
*p <.05
Discussion
To summarize, this research showed that the Chinese subjects tended to rate the overall goals of counseling (which included increased awareness and involvement with other people) differently than the American subjects which was shown by the significant difference between the scores of the two groups of subjects on the Multivaroate F Test. Since none of the individual Univariate F Tests for the evaluation and potency scales of
Awareness and Personal involvements were significantly different, these results do not indicate anything other than a general difference in the views of the Chinese and American subjects concerning the goals of counseling.
The ratings that the Chinese and Americans gave to the counseling-related concepts (the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors) indicated that many differences existed between the attitudes of the two groups. There were differences between the ways that the Chinese and American subjects rated all of the evaluative and potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors considered together. Significant differences also existed between the ways that the American and Chinese subjects rated the individual potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors; however, this was not the case for the evaluative scales of these concepts. The differences that existed between the ratings that the Chinese and American subjects assigned to the counseling-related concepts were more pronounced for the potency scales than for the evaluative scales. Thus, there was a tendency for the Chinese to value counseling-related concepts higher than the Americans, but there was an even more significant tendency for them to feel less strongly about counseling (which is related to how they rated the potency scales of these concepts) than the Americans.
The differences between the ratings that the Chinese and Americans assigned to the potency scales of Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors might have several possible explanations. Perhaps the most straight forward explanation for these differences is that counseling is commonly viewed as being less strongly emphasized in traditional Chinese culture and in Taiwan than in the United States (Mau and Jepsen, 1988). Chinese persons tend to share their personal problems most easily with close friends or family members (Bond & Hwang, 1986), and less easily with counselors because they see counselors as authority figures who help people who cannot help themselves. Additionally, Chinese students, and probably most Chinese individuals, often perceive themselves as belonging to a strong interpersonal network that provides them with a sense of support and belonging (Bond & Hwang, 1986; Pedersen, 1977). Because Chinese may feel more identity with a group (especially the family group) that can provide them with support and help when it is needed, they may feel that they do not need to discuss their personal and interpersonal difficulties in group counseling or with a counselor whom they may see as being impersonal and uninvolved.
The finding that the Chinese evaluated the counseling-related variables higher than the Americans showed that the Chinese students had high expectations about what counseling and counselors might achieve. The Chinese students appeared to view the counseling-related concepts (which included Counseling, Group Counseling and Counselors) more idealistically than the American students; this may have occurred in part because counseling is a relatively new profession in Taiwan. Future research could examine the factors that contribute to these differences between the ways that the Chinese and American students evaluate counseling.
This research also showed that there were large differences in the discrepancy scores that the Chinese and Americans had for the concepts Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling. Some of the reasons for these large differences in the discrepancy scores of the Chinese and Americans have already been suggested. It is possible that because counseling is not emphasized in Taiwan and in Chinese culture as much as it is in the United States that the Chinese subjects did not feel counseling was as potent a force in their lives as the Americans, On the other hand, since counseling is a relatively new profession in Taiwan, this newness might have increased the degree to which these Chinese students valued counseling and learning how to counsel.
This study showed that there were differences in the perceptions that Chinese counseling students in Taiwan and American counseling students had of the various counseling-related variables (Counseling, Counselors and Group Counseling) and the goals of counseling (increased Awareness and Personal Involvements). One limitation of this study was that even though these semantic differential is an instrument that is valid across cultures, making exact determinations about the meaning of the results involves interpretation. The results of this research suggest many more possibilities for future research. For instance, one question that might be explored is whether or not other research instruments show that Chinese counseling students, or other Chinese groups, feel less strongly about counseling, counselors and group counseling than Americans students. If this is indeed the case, as current research shows, then another project might be performed to determine what contributes to these different perceptions that American and Chinese students have about counseling. It is by exploring questions such as these that increased knowledge can be gained about how the people of different cultures and countries perceive counseling and other types of helping relationships.
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