Abstract

This study attempted to identity affective counseling styles for Asian female students studying in the United States. Operating under the assumption that a collectivistic ethic would ha predominant among Asian foreign students, this study predicted that a) Asian female participants would assign mom positive evaluations to a counseling style that focused primarily on a collectivism ethic as compared to an individualism ethic and that b) ratings by Asian female participants would be less positive when the counseling dyad involved an Asian client than when the dyad involved a Caucasian client. Fifty-six Asian-born female students enrolled at Indiana University participated in this study. Each participant watched a randomly assigned videotape in which a Caucasian counselor used, either an individualistic counseling style or a collectivistic counseling style, while interacting with either an Asian client or a Caucasian client. After observing their assigned videotape, participant rated the counselor's effectiveness and their expectations regarding counseling outcomes, The failure to meat the assumption that the cultural value orientations of the Asian participants would be predominantly collectivistic suggested warrant for a three-way analysis with the participant cultural values introduced as a third independent variable. Results of the two-way ANOVA, using only participants (n=32) who espoused relatively collectivistic values, indicated that Predicted Counselor Helpfulness and Estimated Counselor Effectiveness ratings were significantly higher for participants who observed a collectivistic counseling style as compared to participants who observed an individualistic counseling style. With this subsample, the study's first hypothesis was supported. The results of three-way (CS X CE X PCV) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for client ethnicity on Predicted Counselor Helpfulness, and a significant main effect for participant cultural values on Estimated Counselor Effectiveness. A significant three-way interaction effect on Counseling Outcome Expectancies and Predicted Counselor Helpfulness was also found. A major implication to be drawn from the three-way interaction is that Asian international students with relatively individualistic cultural values are likely to prefer an individualistic counseling style while Asian students with relatively collectivistic values will tend to prefer a collectivistic counseling style. In addition, results of the study suggest that participant cultural values do have a significant impact upon female Asian students' evaluations of counseling effectiveness and estimations of counseling outcomes.