Perceptions of control and conflict in counseling supervision

The purpose of this study was to examine trainees' perceptions of supervisory control and conflict in supervision. It was hypothesized that these perceptions would vary according to the experience level of the trainee with beginning trainees perceiving supervisors as controlling what occurs in supervision to a greater extent than advanced trainees who were hypothesized to perceive control as being shared with their supervisors. In addition, it was hypothesized that advanced trainees would perceive themselves as experiencing a greater amount of conflict with their supervisors as outlined in Stoltenberg's (1981) counselor complexity model of counselor development and supervision and that a negative correlational relationship would be found between perceptions of supervision conflict and satisfaction with supervision. Finally, two outcome variables, satisfaction and perceived supervisor impact on counseling skills, and an individual differences variable, reactance, were examined as they related to perceived supervisory control and conflict and trainee experience level. It was hypothesized that beginning trainees would be more satisfied with supervision than advanced trainees and that the relationships between perceived supervisor impact and supervisory control would be different for the two experience level groups as would reactance. Two of the hypotheses were supported--trainees perceived a negative correlational relationship between perceived supervision conflict and satisfactory supervision. In addition, there was a difference in the relationship between perceived supervisee control and reactance for beginning and advanced trainees. It is argued that trainees at both experience levels perceive themselves as sharing relational control with their supervisors and that perceived supervision conflict is no more characteristic of the perceived supervision of advanced trainees and their supervisors than it is for beginning trainee dyads. The implications for research and practice in the area of counselor development and supervision are discussed.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio