Education

illustrations, references, 59 titles. The purpose of this study was to examine parent preferences for school counselor professional activities. The primary focus of research was to determine if any relationship exists between (1) parents ’ demographic factors – gender, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity – and their preferences for school counselors ’ professional activities; (2) educational factors – parents’ level of education and grade level of their student (9-12) – and parents ’ preferences for professional activities; and (3) parents ’ experience parenting high school students and their preferences for school counselors ’ professional activities. I utilized a 7-item demographic questionnaire and an adapted version of the School Counselor Activity Rating Scale (SCARS; Scarborough, 2005). The SCARS is a 48-item standardized instrument that measures how school counselors actually spend their time engaged in professional activities compared to how they would prefer to spend that time. The format was adapted from a verbal frequency scale to a 5-point Likert-type scale. In the current study, parents indicated their preference for school counselors to enact certain tasks, with higher scores indicating greater endorsement of the task. Cronbach’s alpha for each of the SCARS subscale