Counseling Exam Review Products from Howard Rosenthal

Sample questions from the Encyclopedia of Counseling, Third Edition

The following are a sample of example questions from the Encyclopedia of Counseling.

18. A person who has successfully mastered Erikson's first seven stages would be ready to enter Erikson's final or eighth stage,

  1. generativity versus stagnation.
  2. initiative versus guilt.
  3. identity crisis of the later years.
  4. integrity versus despair.

Answer

Each stage is seen as a psychosocial crisis or a turning point. Erikson did not imply that the person either totally succeeds or fails. Instead, he says that the individual leans toward a given alternative (e.g., integrity or despair). The final stage begins at about age 60. An individual who has successfully mastered all the stages feels a sense of integrity in the sense that his or her life has been worthwhile. (d)

74. Elementary school counseling and guidance services

  1. have been popular since the early 1900s.
  2. became popular during World War II.
  3. are a fairly new development which did not begin to gain momentum until the 1960s.
  4. none of the above.

Answer

Choice "a" would be true for secondary school counseling and guidance fueled by the work of Frank Parsons. Secondary school counseling services increased rapidly in the 1960s. Now let's turn our attention to elementary school counseling. Three key reasons have been cited for the slow development of this elementary school counseling. First, the majority of people believed that schoolteachers could double as counselors. Second counseling was conceptualized as focusing on vocational issues. This would not be a primary issue in the elementary years. Finally, secondary schools utilized social workers and psychologists who would intervene if emotional problems were still an issue as the child got older . In the 1980s some state departments of education made elementary school counselors mandatory and needless to say the number of jobs in this area flourished. And surprise, surprise, surprise, middle-school/junior high counseling is a phenomenon that is even newer than elementary school counseling. Except for the fact that these children (age 10 to 14, also known as bubblegummers!) experience more anxiety than their elementary or high school counterparts, we know less about this population than any other in the K-12 system. There are over 100,000 school counselors in the US. (c)

144. According to the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger, a man who buys a $20,000 platinum watch would most likely

  1. feel intense guilt.
  2. read test reports after the purchase to justify his behavior.
  3. harbor severe hatred regarding his mother.
  4. harbor severe hatred regarding his father.

Answer

Although all the choices are plausible, choice "b" best expresses the tendency to justify behavior to create a state of "consonance" (a fancy word for harmony) between attitudes and behavior. Hence, if a test report states that the watch is a good buy, the belief and the behavior are consistent. In case you haven't picked it up yet, I'm betting you'll see at least one question regarding cognitive dissonance on your exam. (b)

404. In the 1940s the two organizations for group therapy that were created were:

  1. NASW and NBCC.
  2. ASGW and AAS.
  3. the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama and the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
  4. AACD and APA.

Answer

Choice "b" mentions the ASGW, or the Association for Specialists in Group Work. This is the division of ACA that focuses primarily on group intervention. The ASGW journal, "The Journal for Specialists in Group Work," is the publication you will need to keep you updated in this area. Other abbreviations are National Association of Social Workers (NASW), established in 1955, and the American Association of Suicidology (AAS). By now you should be familiar with the others. (c)

482. A group therapist is constructing a diagram to better understand the dynamics between subgroups and members. This is called

  1. sculpturing.
  2. ego state analysis.
  3. charting a pictorial sociogram.
  4. charting the variance.

Answer

The study of measuring person-to-person relationships regarding what members in a group think or feel is known as "sociometry." In essence, sociometry is a quantitative study of relationship concerns in a group. The sociogram, credited to Moreno and Jennings, graphically displays group members affiliations and interactions. Choice "a," or family sculpturing, is a family therapy technique in which the family members are instructed to arrange themselves spatially to create a live representation of family members' bonds, feelings of closeness (or lack of it), and sense of alliances. Choice "b" is a common practice in transactional analysis in which the counselor helps the client discern out of which ego state (i.e., Parent, Child, or Adult) he or she is primarily operating in a given situation. (c)

614. An achievement test measures maximum performance while a personality test or interest inventory measures

  1. typical performance.
  2. minimum performance.
  3. unconscious traits.
  4. self-esteem by always relying on a Q-Sort design.

Answer

I'm not crazy about the terms typical and minimal performance, but hey don't blame me, I'm just the messenger of what is often cited in the counseling literature. Interest inventories are popular with career counselors because such measures focus on what the client likes or dislikes. The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is an excellent example. Choice "d," the Q-Sort, often used to investigate personality traits, involves a procedure in which an individual is given cards with statements and asked to place them in piles of "most like me" to "least like me." Then the subject compiles them to create the "ideal self." The ideal self can then be compared to his or her current self-perception in order to assess self-esteem. (a)

706. An experiment is said to be confounded when

  1. undesirable variables are not kept out of the experiment.
  2. undesirable variables are kept out of the experiment.
  3. basic research is used in place of applied research.
  4. the sample is random.

Answer

I hope you didn't mark choices "b" and "d" since they are necessary for a proper experiment. Confounding is said to occur when a undesirable variable which is not controlled by the researcher is introduced in the experiment. Hint: Your exam could refer to this as a contaminating variable. If you missed this one, fess up and review question 704. Take a good hard look at choice "c." Basic research is conducted to advance our understanding of theory, while applied research (also called action research or experience-near research) is conducted to advance our knowledge of how theories, skills and techniques can be used in terms of practical application. Often counselors assert that much of the research is not relevant to the actual counseling process and indeed they are correct. (a)

809. State laws can govern title usage and practice, however, they do not govern

  1. accreditation.
  2. counselor licensure.
  3. psychologist licensure.
  4. involuntary commitment to state psychiatric facilities.

Answer

State laws regulate "licensing" of professionals such as choice "b" counselors, and choice "c" psychologists, and commitment procedures (choice "d"). Accreditation, however, is not the law. In fact, you need to be aware of the fact that many counselor preparation programs are not accredited. Accreditation is a process whereby an agency or school (not an individual) meets certain standards and qualifications set forth by an association or accrediting organization. The organization that grants the accreditation usually requires site visits for the purpose of evaluating the institution initially and on an ongoing basis. Thus, programs in psychology will boast accreditation via the APA (American Psychological Association) while counseling programs can be accredited by CACREP, mentioned earlier. Important reminder: The term "accreditation" applies to programs, not individual counselors. Moreover, experts warn that accreditation is not without disadvantages. Disadvantages include that doing so is very costly for the institution; that faculty are busy teaching required courses and thus often don't have time to teach creative alternative courses; that the accreditation organization and not the school determines the curriculum; that faculty credentials are determined via accreditation guidelines, and this does not necessarily mean such individuals have the best teaching, clinical, or research skills; and that the program approval can be misleading inasmuch as the program could be accredited yet ineffective. (a)

892. PL94-142 (The Education Act for All Handicapped Children) states that

  1. all children between 5 and 21 are assured free education.
  2. handicapped persons are placed in the least restrictive environment (LRE).
  3. an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is developed for each child
  4. all of the above.

Answer

This act was passed in 1975 — the same year Virginia passed the first counselor licensure law — after a congressional finding that the U.S. had over eight million handicapped children. Over half were not receiving appropriate education while one million were excluded from public education. Enforcement relied on funding. That is to say, if a state did not meet the guidelines mentioned in choices "a", "b", and "c", funding was denied. Section 617 (c) of PL 94-142 (another stipulation for funding) gave individuals the right to read their own records and files if they were over 18, as well as the records of their children. The term disabled is currently preferred over the antiquated term handicapped. In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibited employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating against the disabled. (d)

991. The newest career theory would be

  1. constructivist and cognitive approaches.
  2. the trait-and-factor approach.
  3. the developmental and psychoanalytic approaches.
  4. the transactional analysis approach.

Answer

Career experts wonder if traditional theories are applicable now since the majority were based on research using White-middle class males which is hardly representative of the work market today that includes more people of color, a large number of women and teens, and more persons from lower socioeconomic classes. (a)