Seventy-six Counselor Education doctoral students rated the degree to which text-based computer mediated communication (CMC) counseling exchanges had therapeutic relationship qualities. The participants read either a treatment or alternate treatment counseling scenario posted on the World Wide Web and then rated the scenarios on the strength of a working alliance and relational communications of intimacy. There was a significant difference found between the groups indicating that it was not the medium itself that defined the quality of the counseling relationship, but rather the counseling scenario that study participants read. Participants' perceptions about e-mail technology were a significant covariate. Implications of this study for counseling online and counselor education along with future research directions are discussed.
Atanasoff, L.M. Computer-mediated communication and online counseling relationship development . Ph.D. thesis, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved April 22, 2019 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/118541/.