Practitioners' Value-Orientation: Examination of Core Values and Influence of Theoretical Orientation

Examining Kluckhohn's Value-Orientation Model applied to counseling practitioners, the author hypothesized that practitioners would (a) endorse alternatives within value-orientations according to their counseling orientation, and (b) as a group, endorse certain alternatives within value-orientations over others. One hundred and nineteen practitioners who identified themselves as either cognitive-behavioral, psychoanalytic, humanistic, or family-systems oriented completed the Intercultural Values Inventory (Carter & Helms, 1990). Repeated measures analyses of variance failed to find between-group differences examining theoretical orientation, but found that practitioners, as a group, endorsed certain alternatives within value-orientations over others, and these reflected humanistic values. The lack of differences between counseling orientations, the idea of a practitioner culture, limitations, and future research are discussed.