Brief ReportPredictors of willingness to use cyber counseling for college students with disabilities
Section snippets
Cyber counseling needs
Young people rely increasingly on the Internet for entertainment, information, personal help and advice, and social connections.6 Cyber counseling is a new treatment modality for psychological health that can assume various forms such as therapeutic software and online counseling. Counselors are now using the Internet to conduct online counseling and consultation sessions instead of traditional face-to-face counseling.7 Compared with face-to-face counseling, online counseling demonstrates the
Cyber-counseling attitudes and willingness
Help-seeking willingness, attitudes, and behaviors interact with each other and exhibit close relationships.13 College students demonstrate a positive willingness to seek help in face-to-face counseling for problems related to sexuality, family, personality, romantic relationships, study, female gender roles, age, and social support. The greatest predictor of the willingness to seek counseling was a positive attitude toward seeking psychological help. The remainder of the variables, which
Subjects and procedure
The subjects were college students with disabilities recruited from universities in Taiwan. The criteria for participating in this study entailed being a college student in Taiwan and having a disability as categorized according to the World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF). Purposive sampling was used by sending e-mails to 168 college counseling centers in Taiwan, stating the study purpose and target subjects. The e-mails
Demographics and other background information
The study subjects comprised 51.3% women, and the mean age was 21.11 years. Among the subjects, 58.9% came from technological universities; 50.5% had lower grades; 45.8% had average academic achievement; 13.1% had regular, part-time work; 18.7% had psychiatric disorders; 40.2% had mild disabilities (categorized according to the WHO ICF); 67.8% needed to attend hospital rehabilitation sessions; 70.6% visited social networking sites; and 61.7% had no cyber-counseling experience (Table 1).
Cyber-counseling variables
The mean
Descriptive data analysis of college students with disabilities
The mean of each item on help-seeking attitudes in cyber counseling was 3.77, which was higher than that obtained by Rochlen et al in a study on general college students.18 The author assert that the difference is due to student counseling centers at colleges presently offering more resources than they previously did. Numerous interventions are now available in Taiwan, particularly for students with disabilities. Regarding cyber counseling, students with disabilities placed more worth on Value
Limitations
The study limitations included the small sample size. In addition, the results are relevant only to college students with disabilities in Taiwan. In 2013, there were 12,288 college students with disabilities in Taiwan; therefore, future studies can include a larger sample size.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the teachers and college students with disabilities of college counseling centers in Taiwan, and also thank the National Science Committee for the funding support.
References (21)
long-term study of the counseling needs of Turkish university students
J Couns Dev
(2012)Helping your students with disabilities during their college search
J Coll Admission
(2009)- et al.
Understanding the early integration experiences of college students with disabilities
J Postsecondary Educ Disabil
(2012) Personal counselling at an Ontario community college: client groups, service usage, and retention
Can J Couns Psychother
(2011)- et al.
Attitudes to counseling via the Internet: a comparison between in-person counseling clients and Internet support group users
Couns Psychother Res
(2006) - et al.
Real-world dangers in an online reality: a qualitative study examining online relationships and cyber abuse
Soc Work Res
(2009) - et al.
Cyber-communication: finding its place in school counseling practice, education, and professional development
Prof School Couns
(2006) Features and benefits of online counselling: Trinity College online mental health community
Br J Guid Couns
(2009)- et al.
The counseling needs of older persons
Hum Edu
(1981) - et al.
Counseling needs of academically talented students with learning disabilities
Prof School Couns
(2004)
Cited by (4)
Intergenerational differences in the intention to use psychological cybercounseling: A Chinese case study
2020, Patient Education and CounselingCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, some studies have evidenced that the extended TPB (E-TPB) model could have better explanatory power for behavioral intention than the traditional TPB model [14,15]. Moreover, most prior studies have separately examined factors influencing the intention to use psychological cybercounseling, such as attitude [9], stigma [18], perceived usefulness [19], and age [20]. Thus, it is necessary to use an E-TPB model to systematically and comprehensively understand the intention to use psychological cybercounseling.
E-counseling: theoretical frameworks and practical applications
2022, Journal of Education in the 21st Century for Educational and Psychological StudiesRanking the needs of students with disabilities at the University of Sharjah and identifying the state of the art of assistive technologies
2018, Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations ManagementDigital accessibility: An analysis of homepages of Federal Education Institutions of Brazil
2017, Education Policy Analysis Archives
Role of funding sources: National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC 100-2511-S-309 -001) provided financial support for the conduct of the research.
Contributors: The author had participated in the research and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict of interest: There are no conflicts of interest.
Ethical considerations: The author complied with APA ethical standards in the research process and that the work was approved was by the Institutional Review Board of Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.