Evaluation of psychological services provided by educational institutions and hospitals

Abstract

The objective of the study was to evaluate the psychological services of educational institutions and hospitals by comparing client’s feedback on counsellors’ behaviour and counselling sessions. Two hundred clients (120 from universities and 80 from hospitals) were purposively selected from six hospitals and five educational institutions. They were asked to complete the Client's Evaluation of Counselor Behavior Short Form (CECB-S) and the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) as measures of the service quality they had taken from their respective organizations. Data were analyzed using independent sample t-test and two-way Analysis of Variances (ANOVA). Results indicated that mean client evaluation (CE) score by the clients of educational institutions was significantly higher than the clients of hospital setting (t=10.112, p<.001) but the mean session evaluation (SE) scores did not vary between the two service settings (t=- 1.077, p>.05). The SE scores also did not differ significantly between the clients of public and private universities (t=-.049, p>.001) or between government and private hospitals (t=.569, p>.001). The interaction between age and gender (p >0.05) or gender and number of sessions (p >0.05) was not statistically significant for both CE and SE. However, CE score increased with number of sessions (p<.000). Clients taking services from universities evaluated their counsellors’ behaviours favourably than clients taking services from hospitals, but their rating on individual sessions did not vary. Further studies should explore possible reasons for these differences by addressing counsellors’ personal qualities, experiences, skills, and therapeutic mode.