University Student Counselees’ Attitudes and Experiences Towards Online Counseling During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many mental health difficulties in university students. However, with the assistance of online counseling (OC), students can now conveniently access support for psychological problems. The study's aims were 1) to investigate counselees’ attitudes towards OC at the Psychology Excellence Center (PEC) at Thailand’s Mahasarakham University; 2) to compare their attitudes towards OC, categorized by gender, academic year, GPAs, faculty, previous face-to-face counseling (FFC), and OC frequency; and 3) to study the of counselees’ experiences towards OC during the pandemic. An explanatory sequential mixed method was used with two groups of participants. The two groups comprised 131 (122 and 9) total counselees who received OC services from the university’s PEC. The results showed that the counselees' attitudes towards OC were positive. Also, there was no statistically significant difference in the counselees' attitudes toward OC when categorizing them by gender, academic years, GPAs, faculty, previous FFC experiences, or the frequency of OC. In-depth interviews revealed that participants preferred counseling to FFC and OC.