Structural Relationships among Counselling Self-Efficacy, General Self-Efficacy and Positive-Negative Affect in Psychological Counsellor Candidates

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the structural relationships between counselling self-efficacy, general self-efficacy and positive-negative emotions among a sample of psychological counsellor candidates, with the main variable of interest being counselling self-efficacy. Moreover, structural equation modelling was used to test the model in relation to the variables. The study group consisted of 250 psychological counsellor candidates (194 females, 56 males) in their final year of study in the psychological counselling and guidance departments of six different universities. All of the students in this study were selected through random sampling. The results show that the most important independent variable that affected counselling self-efficacy was positive affect, which was also the most important independent variable affecting general self-efficacy. Additionally, the mediating role of general self-efficacy in the relationship between positive affect and psychological self-efficacy was found to be statistically significant. The implication of the findings is that positive affect is a contributing factor to the self-efficacy of psychological counsellor candidates.