Relationship of ethnicity, personality characteristics, and purpose in life to preferred counseling style of students from three Jesuit high schools in Indonesia

• Main Author: Hadisumarto, Ignatius Wuryanto
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1991
• Subjects: Ethnicity; Counseling; Personnel service in secondary education; Personality assessment; High school students > Indonesia > Psychology; Educational Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1395; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8233&context=etd_masteral
• Institution: De La Salle University

The research wants to find a way to improve the implementation of the Jesuits' ideal in education -- total formation of the whole person -- especially in guidance counseling, by investigating the preferred counseling style of their students and the relationship between this preference of approach to the students' ethnicity, personality characteristics, and purpose in life. Questions posed were: (1) What is the generally preferred counseling style of Jesuit high school students in Indonesia? (2) What is the common personality typology of Jesuit high school students? (3) What is the common personality typology, if any, of Jesuit high school students preferring a certain counseling style? (4) To what extent is the Jesuit high school students' preferred counseling style related to their (a) ethnicity, (b) personality characteristics, and (c) purpose in life? This study was designed as a descriptive-correlational endeavor. Using three psychological instruments -- 16 Personality Factor, Purpose-in-Life, and 21 Statements of Counselor Role Preference -- the researcher gathered his data from 231 randomly selected selected (SD = .20, confidence level = .05) students from three Jesuit high schools in Indonesia. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (M, SD), and chi-square statistic for associations between frequencies. The results were further subjected to Fisher's exact test for affirmation. The researcher found that nondirective counseling style was preferred by majority of the sample (86.58 percent). The results also showed that slightly more than half of the sample were strong on Factors 2 (extraversion, outgoing) and 4 (independent, self-sifficient). In terms of purpose in life, 48.48 percent of the sample had a definite purpose in life, 38.53 percent were uncertain, and 10.82 percent had an existential vacuum . On the other hand, chi-square statistic failed to show the correlation between preference of counseling style to each of the following variables: (a) ethnicity, (b) personality characteristics, and (c) purpose in life. At best it can only be said that statistically there seem to be no correlation between preferred counseling style and each of the chosen variables. Fisher's exact test confirmed this analysis. Therefore the researcher concluded that, for the Jesuit high school students in Indonesia, preference of counseling style is not related to any of the chosen variables. Also included in the study are recommendations of the researcher.