Need Assessment Counseling For School Adolescent Students

The youth in the 21st century are facing numerous issues that may affect their ability to do well and properly in school. Every student has strong needs and desires to reach some set goals but in this competitive era, their life is being complicated day by day and vastly affected by various mental health problems in schools, and many other educational, vocational, social, emotional, and behavioral problems among them in our country. One of the reasons for these problems is lack of guidance and counseling services in our schools. According to Şahin Kesici, “a student whose personal guidance and counseling need is satisfied can; establish harmonious relationship with friends and parents, knows his/herself, improve problem solving and communication skills. Besides, s/he can improve social skills, cope with test anxiety and make effective decisions” (Kesici, 2007, p. 1327). On the other hand, when the needs are not met, and a student’s functioning in school suffers for an extended period, the student may break away from school completely (DeSocio & Hootman, 2004). To overcome negative psychological aspects which affect the student’s life, the present research paper is an attempt to identify need assessment counseling for school adolescent students. Need assessment questionnaire (NAQ) constructed and developed by Dogar, Azeem, Majoka, Mehmood, and Latif (2011) which included different areas, i.e. educational, vocational, social, emotional and behavioral needs of students counseling was administered to a sample of 168 (84 male and 84 female) adolescent students of 10th class. The results of the present study indicated that the main effect of gender (male and female) branch of study (science and social science) and the interaction effect between branch of study (science and social sciences) and gender (male and female) were found significant on overall counseling needs. Whereas gender and branch (stream) of study differences were not found in the counseling domains (educational, vocational, social, emotional, and behavioral) areas of counseling needs.