Abstract—Despite the increasing number of e-counsellors, there is a lack of studies especially in the Malaysian context that highlight the skills and practices among e-counsellors and how these are linked to their perceptions when providing e-counselling. This study identifies the relationship between e-counselling skills, e-counselling ethics and e-counselling limitations with counselling self-efficacy among e-counsellors in Malaysia. A total of 159 e-counsellors from various institutions in Malaysia participated in this online survey study. The respondents were selected using the simple random sampling method. The Counselling Self-Estimate Inventory was adopted, and three self-constructed scales were employed for data collection purposes. Correlation analysis found that e-counselling skills (r = 0.597, p < 0.001), e-counselling ethics (r = 0.201, p < 0.001) and e-counselling limitations (r = -0.511, p < 0.001) were significantly correlated to counselling self-efficacy. The structural equation model analysis confirmed the model of relationship between e-counselling skills, e-counselling ethics, e-counselling limitations and counselling self-efficacy. From the three dimensions, e-counselling limitations predicted counselling self-efficacy the best (β value = -0.60), followed by e-counselling ethics (β value= 0.56) and e-counselling skills (β value= 0.18). The findings imply that the extent of e-counsellors’ perceptions on the limitations present in e-counselling play an important role to predict the variance in counselling self-efficacy among e-counsellors. Professional counselling bodies, supervisors and counsellor educators are urged to design a more comprehensive educational and training programme for counsellors. Both counsellor candidates and professional counsellors will benefit from this study as it provides insights for more effective implementation of e-counselling.
Index Terms—Counselling self-efficacy, e-counselling skills, e-counselling ethics, e-counselling limitations.
Zaida Nor Zainudin, Alia Sarah Asri, Yusni Mohamad Yusop, Siti Aishah Hassan, and Lee Wei Rong are with the Department of Counsellor Education and Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Educational Studies, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia (e-mail: zaidanor@upm.edu.my, aliasarahasri95@gmail.com, yusni_my@upm.edu.my, siti_aishahh@upm.edu.my, weiweilee92@gmail.com).
Nor Aniza Ahmad was with the Department of Foundation Studies, Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia (e-mail: nor_aniza@upm.edu.my).
Cite: Zaida Nor Zainudin, Alia Sarah Asri, Yusni Mohamad Yusop, Nor Aniza Ahmad, Siti Aishah Hassan, and Lee Wei Rong, "Model of Relationship between e-Counselling Skills, e-Counselling Ethics and e-Counselling Limitations with Counselling Self-efficacy," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 9, pp. 921-933, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).