THE COUNSELOR'S ROLE AS PERCEIVED BY

To date counselling research has been generally spotty and unsatisfac tory insofar as the practising counselor is concerned (Dressel, 1962). Like others who are less than impressed with counseling research, Dressel implies that researchers have spread their efforts too thinly and over too wide a range of relatively unessential topics. Such topics range from schools of counseling through the training of counselors, counseling methods, and programs, to attempts to delimit the effects inherent in clients as a result of exposure to counseling-to say nothing of a host of attempts to demonstrate the super iority of one counseling method or school or philosophy over another (Travis, 1949). No doubt, the want of both suitable and valid criteria against which to measure this wide range of variables has also been a stumbling block for guidance research (Ebel, 1961). The lack of suitable measuring instruments has no doubt been another. It is also probably true to say that many re searchers in counseling have been negligent in failing to clarify and delimit the basic purposes that should be served by such research (McDaniel, 1956)