Correlates of choice of verbal response modes and personality characteristics of peer support-givers

• Main Author: Taguinod, Assumpta Clarissa R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1989
• Subjects: Personality; Verbal behavior; Adolescents; Peer counseling; Support (Domestic relations); Interpersonal relations; Help-seeking behavior; St Paul College; Tuguegarao; Cagayan > Students; Choice (Psychology); Counseling
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/1697
• Institution: De La Salle University

This descriptive-correlation study is conducted to determine the correlates of choice of verbal response mode and the personality characteristics of peer support-givers. Verbal response modes were composed of acceptance, restatement, clarification, interpretation, suggestion, general lead, moralizing, reassurance, and rejection. The personality characteristics were composed of trusting, sincere, friendly, attractive, warm, broad-minded, can feel with others, confrontative, rejecting and emotionally unstable.Subjects were taken purposively from four English classes of the Liberal Arts and Education courses of St. Paul University, Tuguegarao, Cagayan during the summer of 1989. There were 100 designated peer support-givers and 100 designated peer support-recipients. The subjects were first and second year students, ranging in age from 17-18 years. The subjects were not matched. They were taken purposively because they met the following criteria: peer support-givers should have given help to friends who seek their help three or more times and they should not have undergone any training on peer counseling or the like peer support-recipients should have sought help and confided their problems to a friend three or more times and that they seek helpt to a friend. The Villar Counselor Preference Inventory (1972) was used to determine the verbal responses used by peer support-givers and preferred by peer support- recipients. In the area of choice of friends to go to for help, types of problems presented to friends, and the personality characteristics of the respondents, a content validated questionnaire was used. Correlation coefficients and percentages were computed to test each of the hypotheses.The findings of the study revealed that there is no significant difference between the mean scores in the response modes between givers and recipients. However, there is a difference in the response mode suggestion (r=-.137). Female support givers use clarification and moralizing modes, and males use general leads. Statistical analyses of the data showed that there were significantly, although, low relationships between the support-givers' actual response modes and sex (r=-.238 to r=.191) and the support-givers' actual response modes and actual personality characteristics (r=.322 to r=-.190). There was no significant relationship between the support-recipients' preferred response modes and sex in both .05 and .01 level. However, there was a significant, although, low relationship found between the support-recipients' preferred response modes and the perceived personality characteristics from support-givers (r=.288 to r=-.211). These findings, further revealed that when support-givers tend to be intelligent, the moralizing response mode is used friendly for the interpretation mode intelligent, patient, and can feel with others for the reassurance mode flexible for the acceptance mode attractive for the restatement mode.