Development of Competence in Peer Counseling of Chiang Mai University Students

Abstract

This research aimed to develop the peer counseling competence program, and to study the effectiveness of the peer counseling competence program for Chiang Mai University students. The research samples comprised 30 undergraduate Chiang Mai University students, who volunteered to participate in the peer counseling competence program. By employing a simple random sampling method, the subjects were divided into an experimental group and a control group; each group consisted of 15 students. Consequently, the experimental group attended the peer counseling competence program, whereas the control group did not. t-test was employed to analyze the data. The research results were as follows: 1. The peer counseling competence program was validated by the three experts that revealed the Item Objective Congruence between 0.67-1.00. As a result, the program could be used as the peer counseling competence program in this context. 2. The students who attended the peer counseling competence program had significantly higher competence than before attending the program at the .001 level. 3. The students who attended the peer counseling competence program had significantly higher competence than before attending in comparing with the students who did not attend at the .001 level. In conclusion, employing the peer counseling competence program could effectively increase the Chiang Mai University students’ competence in peer counseling. Moreover, the qualitative information was discussed with the results to confirm the efficiency of the peer counseling competence program in an empirical manner.