Mediational inferences in the process of counselor judgment

D. C. Strohmer et al suggested that in the process of moving from observations to clinical judgments, the cognitive activity of the counselor can be described as a mediated stagewise decision model. The present study replicated and extended the Strohmer et al research. 20 25-49 yr old counselors were asked to make status and attributional inferences and diagnostic classification of clients. All combinations of 4 levels each of personality test, achievement, and client disability information were presented. Three theoretically derived structural equation models were tested for their ability to account for the correlations among all exogenous and endogenous variables in the parent model. Findings suggest that the clinical judgment process was stagewise mediated and that attributional inferences had little direct impact on final diagnostic classification. (9 ref)