E-mail Counseling Service in Cybercounseling Agencies: A Study of Practice and Ethical Behaviors Author:文美華Mei-Hua Wen, 王智弘 Chih-Hung Wang, 陳慶福 Ching-Fu Chen
Research Article
The purpose of this study was to investigate the practice and ethical behaviors of cybercounseling agencies on e-mail counseling service. Viewpoints, methods, barriers, and coping strategies in e-mail counseling service in cybercounseling agencies, as well as ethical behaviors of these agencies were evaluated using the Chinese Guidance Association (CGA) Code of Ethics. An evaluation form, a questionnaire, and interviews were adopted. The last step was to interview counseling practitioners from some of these agencies to find out the developing process of the coping strategies in e-mail counseling service. Important findings were as follows: (a) E-mail counseling service provided multiple functions of helping and brought cybercounseling agencies benefits; (b) Community agencies implemented e-mail counseling service earlier than educational institutions and provided higher ratios of Web-based E-mail and post-counseling evaluation; (c) Manpower deficiency and computer network problems were the largest barriers in e-mail counseling service developing process; others barriers included deficiencies of budget, hardware, and related ethics and laws of cybercounseling; (d) The coping strategies for barriers had been developed by cybercounseling agencies, such as improvement of working flow of e-mail counseling service, making good use of outside resources, strengthening training courses; (e) Some flaws were found in the ethical behavior of agencies in e-mail counseling service.