Harpal Singh and Hardeep Lal Joshi
Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra
Pages:, 447-462
The present study aims at the development of a psychological self-reported device to
gauge Aptitude for Counselling Psychology. Exploratory factor analytical study was
designed to construct and unearth the factorial structure of self-reported Aptitude test
to screen effective counsellor. Reviewed literature pertinent to counsellors’ characteristics
disclosed myriads of prerequisite characteristics. Initial draft of 365 items submitted
for experts’ reviews was subsequently reduced to 312 items. After administering items
on a sample of 205 participants, quantitative item-analysis for said items results in 166
items having satisfactory corrected item-total correlation and dimension-wise alpha
above .70. After having a statistical check on assumptions, Principal component analysis
(PCA) condensed 166 items onto 25 1st order factors explaining 59.42% of variance,
although correlated. The 2nd and 3rd order factor solution produce somewhat factorially
pure structure, where 2 higher order factors extracted for 6 2nd order factors explicated
43.82% of variance after rotating factors orthogonally. The loading on Higher order
factors ranged between “.692 to .712. The internal consistency coefficient indexed as
Cronbach’s alpha was reported .95. Initially recommended and selected dimensions
converged on 2 factors with statistically substantial loadings. The correlated nature of
166 items within 14 dimensions generated 25, 6, and 2 factors for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
order PCA, respectively.