Academic peer counseling: Advising with a personal touch

✍ Scribed by Gayle Privette; James E. Delawder

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 337 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0165-0653
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00119091

✦ Synopsis

By taking advantage of its resources, students already prepared to do counseling, an academic department has used a peer counseling program to conserve faculty time, improve the dissemination of information, and provide significant interpersonal contact for undergraduate students. Careful selection and synergic supervision have resulted in performance and commitment from the peer counselors. Their efforts have been evaluated positively by student consumers and faculty.

Since the seminal research of Rioch, Elkes, Flint, Usdansky, Newman and Silber (1963) andTruax, Carkhuff andDouds (1964) indicating the effectiveness of trained lay counselors, peer and paraprofessional counselors have emerged in many organizations. These include corrections (Welch, 1977), psychiatric residences (Palmer, Luisada and Peele, 1975), community mental health agencies (Toff, 1977), and crisis centers (Doyle, Foreman and Wales, 1977), as well as schools (Hayes, McKenzie and Privette, 1975). A major assumption underlying paraprofessional programs is that satisfactory service can be offered less expensively by paraprofessionals than by professionals. A second assumption, especially of peer counseling, is that peers are superior to professionalels, at least with the immediate rapport and effectiveness that is found in an egalitarian relationship.

Peer counselors are found among a variety of groups: older adults (Becker and Zarit, 1978), college students (Hart and King, 1979;Kuppersmith, Blair and Slotnick, 1977), Blacks (Archer and Turner, 1976), Indians (Lechnyr, 1973), adolescents (Varenhorst, 1974), and elementary school children (McCann, 1975).