Retaining telephone counsellor volunteers at Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland Limited: a consideration of counselling self-efficacy

Beccaria, Gavin and Weston, Alisha (2009) Retaining telephone counsellor volunteers at Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland Limited: a consideration of counselling self-efficacy. In: 44th Australian Psychological Society Annual Conference 2009, 30 Sep-4 Oct 2009, Darwin, Australia.

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Abstract

Many volunteer organisations experience difficulties with being able to successfully recruit and retain their
volunteers. This has been the case for Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland, a non-profit telephone counselling service in Toowoomba. This organisation has experienced high levels of volunteer turnover in the past 12 months. A project was designed to investigate some of the possible factors that are associated with volunteer retention. In particular, this paper attempted to consider the influence of counselling self-efficacy on volunteer retention. Participants consisted of 40 telephone counsellors (31 women and 9 men), from Lifeline Darling Downs and South West Queensland. They were requested to
complete two surveys that were designed specifically for Lifeline Telephone Counsellors (TCs). These surveys measured TCs‘ satisfaction with; accreditation, supervision and the organisational climate.Participants were also required to complete an inventory that measured their counselling self-efficacy, a scale that measured their emotional well-being at work, and a scale that measured their intentions to leave Lifeline. This study revealed that there was a significant negative relationship between satisfaction with accreditation and organisational satisfaction with intentions to leave. There was found to be no relationship between counselling self-efficacy and intentions to leave; and no relationship between
counselling self-efficacy and satisfaction with supervision. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between levels of counselling self-efficacy based on years of telephone counselling experience, and no
significant difference between levels of counselling self-efficacy and level of training. Overall the sample indicated a high level of counselling self-efficacy and it is recommended that future research assess counselling self-efficacy prior to TC training

Statistics for this ePrint Item

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Commonwealth Reporting Category E) (Poster)
Refereed:	Yes
Item Status:	Live Archive
Additional Information:	Poster presentation - only abstracts published in the conference proceedings.
Faculty / Department / School:	Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology
Date Deposited:	26 May 2010 01:44
Last Modified:	02 Jul 2013 23:51
Uncontrolled Keywords:	telephone counsellors; volunteers; Lifeline
Fields of Research :	16 Studies in Human Society > 1607 Social Work > 160702 Counselling, Welfare and Community Services 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1701 Psychology > 170107 Industrial and Organisational Psychology 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1701 Psychology > 170106 Health, Clinical and Counselling Psychology
Socio-Economic Objective:	E Expanding Knowledge > 97 Expanding Knowledge > 970117 Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences C Society > 93 Education and Training > 9399 Other Education and Training > 939902 Education and Training Theory and Methodology
URI:	http://eprints.usq.edu.au/id/eprint/7813

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