Online versus face-to-face counseling: An examination of session evaluation and empathy

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in individual counseling sessions between the traditional face-to-face and the online chat conditions. The clients' perspective of their counselors' degree of empathy and evaluations of counseling sessions, as well as the discrepancies between clients' and counselors' evaluations of their counseling sessions were dependent variables.; A 2 (face-to-face and online) x 5 (counselors) factorial design was used in this study. Forty volunteer clients (14 men, 26 women) and five trained counselors at the University of Minnesota participated in this study. Clients were randomly assigned to have an individual counseling session with a counselor in either traditional face-to-face or online (synchronous chat) condition. Each counselor saw four clients in both online and face-to face situations.; A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and subsequent statistical analyses showed that clients perceived the degree of their counselors' empathy higher in the traditional face-to-face condition than in the online condition. Also, clients evaluated their counseling sessions as having more depth in the traditional face-to-face than in the online condition. There was no significant difference in the discrepancies between the counselors' and their clients' evaluations of the counseling sessions between the online and the traditional face-to-face conditions. Limitations of the study and future research directions were discussed.