Counselor-client working alliance in career counseling: Its relationship to significant process events and micro/macro outcomes

The relationship of working alliance to significant process events and to the micro-(session impact) and macro-(treatment effectiveness) outcomes of individual career counseling is detected in this study.The subjects of the study were twenty college freshmen who were undecided on what course to pursue. They manifested a low career maturity level. Five counselors participated in the study. Each counselor met four clients in three sessions that lasted for 40-50 minutes.Treatment involved individual career counseling based on the models of Brown and Brooks (1991), and McDaniels and Gysbers (1992). Immediately after each session, participants filled out the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) and the Significant Events Questionnaire as process measures and the Session Evaluation Questionnaire of micro-outcome measure. Counseling effectiveness (macro-outcome) was assessed by the Career Exploratory Inventory.The results indicated that the quality of the working alliance between the counseling interactants was generally defined by the component of Bond for counselors, and Task for clients. As hypothesized, across session differences were found in the participants\u27 ratings of working alliance as well as of session impact. However, significant associations between the participants\u27 rating were found only for the Depth dimension of session impact, i.e., during the latter part of the therapy. No significant associations were found between the participants\u27 rating of working alliance. Session-by-session correlations between working alliance and session impact showed significant results. The counselors\u27 ratings indicated greater association while the middle stage of counseling reflected highest associations for both groups. The effectiveness of counseling was reflected in the significant increase in career maturity levels and high degree of goal attainment of clients at posttest. The hypothesized relationship, however, between first session working alliance and counseling outcome was not supported. The results also suggested that the significant events remembered by the counseling interactants after the session tended to relate to the strength of their alliances.The findings of this study suggested the relevance of counselor-client working alliance and significant events in counseling as viable indices of the therapeutic changes that occur within sessions over the course of treatment. Likewise, it showed some evidence on the reciprocal relationship between working alliance and session impact, and how the former may influence counseling effectiveness