中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: Recent social changes in Taiwan include a rising demand for reforming the approach taken by agencies that offer counseling services, and increased job possibilities for counseling psychologists. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the skill sets of licensed counseling psychologists in Taiwan match clients' requirements. Methods: The methods used for data collection included individual and group interviews, the Delphi method, and a questionnaire. Questions were developed from the results of individual interviews with 9 counseling psychologists and focus group interviews with 9 other counseling psychologists. Ten counseling scholars and professionals were invited to apply the procedures of the Delphi technique to construct the questionnaire. A total of 101 valid questionnaire responses were collected. Importance-Performance Analysis was applied to the data. Results: Counseling practitioners valued self-awareness, professional development, and self-management ability the most. They valued the ability to express themselves, integrate ability, computer skills, writing ability, and supervision ability the least. Counseling practitioners performed best in dealing attitude and self-management ability, but performed worst in their ability to express themselves, integrate ability, deal with specific issues, and supervision ability. Conclusions: When dealing with clients who need multiple forms of support, practitioners need more training in how to deal with an emergency, creating, expressing themselves, integrating, cooperating with other professionals, public relations, marketing, and evaluating. Supervision ability should not be neglected in professional development. Suggestions are provided for counselors' education and training.