Abstract

This study reviews research reports on the client expectation about counseling. The four different aspects of expectation researches overviewed were the expectation dimension, the effct of client expe­ctation on counseling, the change in client expectation over the course of counseling, and some short-comings of the expectation researches overviewed. Expectation about counseling is multiple, and consists of the expectation of counseling process, counseling outcome, counselor's role, client's role, and counselor-client relationship. Expectation about counseling influences help-and helper-seeking behavior. That is, clients with personal problem seek a professional counselor, and have expectation of the counselors expertness. Many studies examine the assumption that disconfirmation of client expectation has a negative influence in early counseling, but the research results do not seem to be consistent. There are few studies that examine the effect of expectation on the final outcome of counseling. But client expectation changes over the course of counseling, and this change is related to the final outcome. Due to such methodological shortcomings as the ambiguous definition of the term 'expectation', inappropriate analysis method, unvalidated tools, most studies on the client expectation do not converge on the conclusive results. Finally, some suggestions for the future research are presented in this paper.