Content Analysis of Counselor and Teacher Responses

The findings of this report were based on content analysis of written responses made by experienced and inexperienced counselors, and experienced and inexperienced teachers. Responses of the 4 groups were elicited with an instrument containing 4 open-end questions, administered after viewing a film. The written responses were coded in 8 categories. An estimate of reliability was determined for the coding in 5 of the categories and found to be uniformly high. Ratios were computed for the written responses of each respondent in the eight categories. The data were treated to determine the significance of differences between the four groups. Counselors were found to use a style that is ambiguous and characterized by more sophisticated vocabulary.