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Experiences of volunteer telephone counselors: A comparison of a professionally oriented and a nonprofessionally oriented approach to their training
Author(s) -
Viney Linda
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6629(198307)11:3<259::aid-jcop2290110310>3.0.co;2-9
Subject(s) - feeling , psychology , competence (human resources) , volunteer , agency (philosophy) , medical education , social psychology , applied psychology , medicine , philosophy , epistemology , agronomy , biology
To compare the effects on counseling experience of two different training programs, three counseling reports from each member of two groups of volunteer telephone counselors were content analysed. As predicted, the counselors working in the agency using the nonprofessional approach proved to communicate more anxieties and depressive feelings and also positive feelings and feelings of competence than those working with the professional approach. They also appeared to be more aware of the social networks within which they were operating. The views of their callers which each group presented were also different, although the types of calls they received were not. The volunteer counselors in the nonprofessionally oriented program described their callers as less anxious and less helpless than did those in the professionally oriented program. These differences were related to the emphasis on informal selection procedures, gut‐level spontaneity, and the peer relationships among “insiders” which appeared to characterize the nonprofessional approach. This was contrasted with the formalized selection procedures, standardized counseling techniques based on professional models, and asymmetrical relationships among “outsiders” which characterized the professional approach to volunteer counselors.