"Is the counseling for Koreans conducted in Korea effective " has long been an important question that Korean counseling practitioners as well as scholars since counseling psychology was introduced from western culture sixty years ago. In addition, th...
"Is the counseling for Koreans conducted in Korea effective " has long been an important question that Korean counseling practitioners as well as scholars since counseling psychology was introduced from western culture sixty years ago. In addition, the following two issues have recently emerged in various counseling outcome research. The first is that verification of outcomes in natural settings came to be important(Minami et al, 2007). The second is that it has been focused more on the effectiveness of common factors (specifically counselor(therapist) factors) rather than specific factors that affects counseling outcome(Kim, Wampold, & Bolt, 2006). Verification of counselor(therapist) effect in counseling outcome which has been neglected has gained more attention recently(Luts et al, 2007). Outcome analysis by using longitudinal data and statical methods(multi-level data analysis) which consider data structure in which counselors, clients, and measure points are nested and which focus on random effects of each level are strongly recommended(Boyle & Willms, 2001). Thus, this study conducted a multi-level modeling analysis, using HLM and collecting counseling outcome data longitudinally in natural settings of Korea for 3 years. The aims of this study are as follows: 1)Is the counseling(psychotherapy) conducted in Korea effective , 2)How much does the counselor(therapist) factor contribute to counseling(psychotherapy) outcome in Korea 3)Which are the meaningful characteristics of counselors(therapists) and how much does each counselor(therapist) factor contribute to the outcome of counseling 4)Which are the facilitating factors in successful counseling(psychotherapy) 5)Which therapeutic factor plays an important role Korea counseling model For these research questions, a line of studies have been done. As a result of these studies, one of the major findings is that counseling outcome in Korea was effective, and counselor(therapist) effect was about 4%, which was about the same level or a little lower than the level found in the studies done in western countries. However, it also was found that predicting variables in this study could only explain the individual difference at the initial levels. This result suggests that the examination of the individual differences at the level of clients as well as counselors as predicting variables pertaining to clients' changing process be needed. In addition to the major study, several qualitative studies were conducted to find culture specific counselor factors; 1)qualitative analysis on counselors and clients who showed highest and lowest outcomes, 2)qualitative analysis of the report made by master counselors(therapists) as well as clients who majored in counseling. This project also develop and validate the Perceived Validation Scale(PVS) to measure the counseling outcome, and the Effective Counselor's factor Scale in Korea(in review). The academic significances of these research are as follows; these studies 1)cross-culturally verified counseling outcome in Korea, 2)employed more appropriate methods to measure counselor's effect in counseling(psychotherapy) outcome by collecting longitudinal data based on 3-level approach and by analyzing data focusing on random effects of each level, and 3)improved the validity of the Korean counseling model suggested by longitudinal quantitative studies. On the other hand, some of the limitations are 1)these studies rely on self-report measure to collect data, 2)there have been limited chances to observe actual counseling(psychotherapy) sessions. Nevertheless, these studies were able to 1)verify counseling effectiveness in Korea that contributes the psychological health of Korean people, 2)provide counseling and education professionals in Korea with practical guidelines for effective counseling, and 3)give meaningful suggestions to improve curriculum for professional training by verifying significant counselor(therapist) factors in counseling.