Helping skills courses: The effects of student diversity and numeric marginalization on counseling self-efficacy, counseling self-stigma, and mental health.

ABSTRACT

We examined the effects of racial/ethnic diversity and numeric marginalization on learning outcomes (changes in counseling self-efficacy, self-stigma for seeking counseling, and mental health) with 402 students in 30 sections of helping skills classes. Students self-identified as African American, Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Other, or White. We operationalized class diversity with the diversity index developed by Chang (1999) and numeric marginalization as the percentage of students in the class that shared a target student's identity. Using two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM; students nested within classes), we predicted counseling self-efficacy, counseling self-stigma, and mental health from student identity (Level 1), and the cross-level interaction between diversity and numeric marginalization (Level 2). Results suggested that classroom diversity had no effects on counseling self-efficacy but was associated with greater self-stigma. However, more classroom diversity was linked with better mental health for Latinx students. With African American students, numeric marginalization was associated with more counseling self-stigma. Surprisingly, for Asian students, numeric marginalization (i.e., a greater percentage of Asian students in a classroom) was linked with worse mental health. Finally, diversity had no effects on outcomes for White students. Findings demonstrate the importance of racial/ethnic composition in helping skills courses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).