The Study of Clients’ Perception of the Working Alliance, the Counselor’s Effectiveness, and the Client’s Satisfaction with Webcounseling Author:許維素 Wei – Su Hsu, 吳肇元 Chao-Yuan Wu, 陳宇芬 Yu-Fen Chen
Research Article
The purpose of this study was to explore the clients’ perception of the “working alliance”, “counselor’s effectiveness”, and “client’s satisfaction” in the process of Internet counseling via real-time webcounseling and E-mail counseling. Twenty university students and 8 counselors were invited and assigned to real-time webcounseling group and E-mail counseling group equivalently. Both group received fifty-minute sessions once a week, which proceeded two to six sessions based on clients’ decision. The findings of this study were as follows: (1) For the real-time webcounseling group, after the first session, the clients’ perception of “working alliance” had significantly positive correlation with the clients’ perception of “counselor’s effectiveness” and “client’s satisfaction,” and the clients’ perception of “counselor’s effectiveness” had significantly positive correlation with the clients’ perception of “client’s satisfaction.” After the last session, the clients’ perception of “working alliance” had significantly positive correlation with the clients’ perception of “counselor’s effectiveness.” A significant difference was found in the clients’ perception of “working alliance” and “client’s satisfaction” between the first and the last session. (2) For the E-mail counseling group, after the first session, no significantly positive correlation was found for the clients’ perceptions. After the last session, the clients’ perception of “working alliance” and “counselor’s effectiveness” had significantly positive correlation with the clients’ perception of “client’s satisfaction.” A significant difference was found in the clients’ perception of “working alliance” and “client’s satisfaction” between the first and the last session. (3) For the difference between the two groups, no significant difference was found for all clients’ perception between the first session and the last one. Finally, based on the results and limitations of this study, some important suggestions for Internet counseling and future studies in relative fields were proposed.