23-4 Practice Survey of Counseling Psychologists in Taiwan The purpose of the study was to investigate the current practice patterns and difficulties of counseling psychologists in Taiwan. The research questions include practice locations, fee schedule, sources of referral, theoretical orientations, professional activities, working hour allocation, career planning, and manpower needs. Two hundreds and eighteen licensed counseling psychologists completed a questionnaire regarding their professional practice. The results of the study indicate that: (a) Gender ratio between female and male counseling psychologists is 3.7:1; (b) Out of 218 counseling psychologists, 78.9% of them work primarily in school settings; (c) Counseling psychologists served mostly adults (61.67%) with the second group being child/adolescents (37.03%); and very few elderly (1.30%) ; (d) The reasonable fee schedule for counseling and psychotherapy for a 45-60 minutes session is NT$1,400 according the respondents; (e) The mean work hours a week for the respondents is 35.86; including direct service (10.99 hours), administrative (11.11 hours), teaching (7.55 hours), research (3.86 hours), and others (2.35 hours); (f) More than eighty percent of the respondents wish to work full-time or part-time in professional organizations; and (g) Majority of the respondents believe there is a manpower shortage of counseling psychologists in Taiwan. Discussion of the research findings and suggestions for policy implications and future research are presented in this paper. Keywords |