Counselor Education Doctoral Students’ Research Self-Efficacy: A Concept Mapping Approach

Research self-efficacy (RSE) is a key concept not only for counselor educators as successful researchers but also for the advancement of counselor education field. In the literature, researchers have studied multiple factors (e.g., research interest, productivity) to understand the complex nature of RSE phenomenon. Despite being informative, these studies only focused on partial aspects of the multilayered RSE, showing methodological and conceptual limitations. Particularly, we do not have a holistic understanding of RSE and the interrelated relationship among the factors informing RSE. In the current study, the researcher used a mixedmethods design, Concept Mapping (Kane & Trochim, 2007) to explore the factors influencing counselor education doctoral students’ RSE in CACREP-accredited doctoral programs. Current study findings yielded 17 clusters represented in six regions describing the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic levels of Ecological Model (McLeroy et al., 1988). The researcher discussed the findings in the view of the current literature along with implications for researcher training and future research practices as well as with the limitations of current study