Counseling Students’ Self-Efficacy: Comparative Contributions Of Emotional Intelligence, Student Perception Of Supervisory Working Alliance, Age, And Gender

ABSTRACT Elliott, Jennifer L., Counseling Students’ Self-Efficacy: Comparative Contributions of Emotional Intelligence and Student Perception of the Supervisory Working Alliance, Age, and Gender. Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, Wayne State University, 2021. The purpose of this quantitative study was to better understand the comparative contributions of emotional intelligence and student perception of the supervisory working alliance to counseling students’ self-efficacy, while moderating for age and gender. Moderation analysis was utilized, as well as surveys with significant validity to measure the variables. Data were collected through the Qualtrics survey platform. The findings of this study have implications for counselors, supervisors, and educators as to the level of importance of the variables being investigated, and how relevant they are to the education and training process for students’ who seek to become licensed counselors, in that this research has shown the importance of emotional intelligence and the supervisory working alliance to counseling students’ self-efficacy, which we know will in turn impact their success as counselors. This implies that a great deal of importance should be placed on these aspects of student training.The results of this study indicated that while emotional intelligence and the supervisory working alliance both have a significant impact on a counseling student’s self-efficacy, gender and age have very little impact on the supervisory working alliance, or on emotional intelligence. These results are contrary to previous research which found gender significantly impacts emotional intelligence (Ciarrochi, Hynes, & Crittenden, 2005; Hall, 1978; Hall & Mast, 2008; Hargie, Saunders, & Dickson, 1995)