Advisor
Ososkie, Joseph N.
Committee Member
Hummel, Faye I.
Committee Member
Bezyak, Jill
Committee Member
Fried, Juliet Hope, 1952-
Department
Human Rehabilitation
Institution
University of Northern Colorado
Type of Resources
Text
Place of Publication
Greeley (Colo.)
Publisher
University of Northern Colorado
Date Created
5-1-2013
Genre
Thesis
Extent
153 pages
Digital Origin
Born digital
Description
Rehabilitation counselors experience ethical issues on a daily basis. There are a number of potential influences on the ethical reasoning of Certified Rehabilitation Counselors (CRCs), including external workplace pressures. Professional development efforts in ethics are infused in rehabilitation counseling graduate programs and continuing education in ethics is a requirement to maintain the CRC credential. Little is known however about the impact of these interventions on the day to day ethical decision-making of CRCs. This study analyzed factors which have been hypothesized to influence the ethical orientations and intuitive, everyday decisions of CRCs. This study had two overreaching goals: (1) to establish the unique contributions of factors which have been predicted to impact principled ethical decision making, and (2) to confirm if the Ethical Decision-Making Scale-Revised (EDMS-R) is a reliable and valid scale for use in the field of rehabilitation counseling. The study of the ethical orientations of CRCs, rather than graduate rehabilitation counseling students, furthers existing research by sampling working counselors across a career wide developmental timeline. No significant relationships were detected between the principled index score dependent variable and measures of formalized ethics education, tenure and exposure to the ethical code. The proposed explanatory model was subsequently rejected. The EDMS-R did show evidence as a reliable and valid tool for use in the rehabilitation counseling field, however the range of the outcome variable suggest limits on practical use within this population without further modification. Understanding what promotes counselor resistance to maladaptive external factors in ethical decision-making remains an open and important question for the field of rehabilitation counseling. Assessing the impact of educational interventions on counselor ethical decision making remains a high priority for rehabilitation counseling educators. Further exploration toward an understanding what factors influence the ethical judgments of rehabilitation counselors could help inform how modifiable conditions such as the construction of formalized education interventions are constructed.
Degree type
PhD
Degree Name
Doctoral
Language
English
Rights Statement
Copyright is held by author.
