The effects of a counseling training program for the development of knowledge abilities and attitudes

A case study of village public health volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The purposes of this quasi experimental research were to study the effectiveness of a counseling training program for the volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample population consisted of sixty village public health volunteers from multistage randomization, divided into an experimental group and a control group of thirty each. The instruments used in data collection consisted of 1) an evaluation form of knowledge in counseling with the reliability of 0.76; 2) an evaluation form of counseling abilities with the reliability of 0.845; and 3) an evaluation form of attitudes towards counseling with the reliability of 0.93. The instrument used in the experiment was a counseling training program for the development of knowledge, abilities, and attitudes towards counseling during the COVID-19 pandemic of the volunteers with the index of objective congruence (IOC) of 0.60-1.00. The hypothesis was statistically tested using the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed Rank Test and the Mann-Whitney U Test. Findings are as follows: 1). The volunteers exhibited scores from the evaluation of counseling knowledge, counseling abilities, and counseling attitude after attending the counseling training program at a higher level than prior to the training at the statistically significant level of .01. and 2). The volunteers attending the counseling training program exhibited scores from the evaluation of counseling knowledge, counseling abilities, and counseling attitude after attending the counseling at a higher level than those not attending the program at the statistically significant level of .01.