Abstract:
The objective of the study was to evaluate the psychological services of educational
institutions and hospitals by comparing client’s feedback on counsellors’ behaviour and
counselling sessions. Two hundred clients (120 from universities and 80 from hospitals) were
purposively selected from six hospitals and five educational institutions. They were asked to
complete the Client's Evaluation of Counselor Behavior Short Form (CECB-S) and the
Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) as measures of the service quality they had taken
from their respective organizations. Data were analyzed using independent sample t-test and
two-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVA).
Results indicated that mean client evaluation (CE) score by the clients of educational
institutions was significantly higher than the clients of hospital setting (t=10.112, p<.001) but
the mean session evaluation (SE) scores did not vary between the two service settings (t=-
1.077, p>.05). The SE scores also did not differ significantly between the clients of public
and private universities (t=-.049, p>.001) or between government and private hospitals
(t=.569, p>.001). The interaction between age and gender (p >0.05) or gender and number of
sessions (p >0.05) was not statistically significant for both CE and SE. However, CE score
increased with number of sessions (p<.000).
Clients taking services from universities evaluated their counsellors’ behaviours
favourably than clients taking services from hospitals, but their rating on individual sessions
did not vary. Further studies should explore possible reasons for these differences by addressing
counsellors’ personal qualities, experiences, skills, and therapeutic mode.
