Counselors' decision-making style and their ethical decision-making attitude

Objective: To explore the relationship of counselors' decision-making style and their ethical decision-making attitude. Methods: Totally 89 college counselors w ere assessed w ith the General Decision-Making Style( GDMS) questionnaire developed by Scott and Bruce in 1995 and the self-made ethical decision-making questionnaire designed for testing the subjects' ethical attitude( including 6 ethical situations,namely competency and harmlessness,confidentiality and adolescents ethics,dual relationship and avoidance of illegal use,informed consent,privacy rights and confidentiality,value-neutrality). Results: The decision-making style of counselors according to their scores of GDMS w as rational style( 20. 2 ± 2. 8),follow ed by dependent( 16. 3 ± 3. 9),intuitive- impulsive( 14. 2± 2. 6) and avoidant style( 11. 9 ± 4. 4). Counselors' attitude tow ards the 4 ethical situations show ed high consistency on the confidentiality and adolescents ethics,dual relationship and avoidance of illegal use,privacy rights and confidentiality,value-neutrality situations( agreed or disagreed proportions w ere 71. 9% to 98. 9%). Counselors' response differed greatly on "competency and harmlessness" and " informed consent" situations( agreed proportions w ere 46. 1% and 56. 2% respectively). Age w as negatively correlated w ith rational,dependent and avoidant styles scores( r =- 0. 27,- 0. 29,- 0. 29; Ps 0. 05). Regression coefficients of attitude of counselors scored higher on the dependent style,w hich w ere significant on the "competency and harmlessness", "confidentiality and adolescents ethics", "privacy rights and confidentiality" situations( OR = 0. 84,0. 72,0. 81; Ps 0. 05). Conclusion: Counselors show a strong sense of ethics and have consistent ethical attitude tow ards most of ethical situations. Counselors w ith higher scores on the dependent style are more susceptible to others.