NCC cheat sheet

The ACA Code of Ethics (2014) has nine sections: A Counseling Relationship; B Confidentiality and Privacy; C Professional Responsibility; D Relationships With Other Professionals; E Evaluation, Assessment, and Interpretation; F Supervision, Training, and Teaching; G Research and Publication; H Distance Counseling, Technology, and Social Media; I Resolving Ethical Issues.

Six foundational ethical principles: autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, fidelity, veracity. When principles conflict, the counselor documents a reasoned, consultative resolution rather than defaulting to a single principle.

Confidentiality is not absolute; commonly recognized limits are serious and foreseeable harm to self or others, abuse of minors or vulnerable adults, a valid court order, and written client authorization for release.

Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1976) established the duty to protect: when a client threatens an identifiable victim, the counselor must take reasonable protective steps permitted by state law.

A subpoena is a request for records that can be questioned or contested; a court order signed by a judge must be obeyed. Counselors verify the document's validity and consult before releasing records.

Decision-making sequence for an ethical dilemma: identify the problem, review the code and applicable law, consult supervisors or peers, generate and weigh options, act, document the reasoning, and evaluate the outcome.

Boundary crossing versus boundary violation: a crossing departs from standard practice but is non-exploitative and may help the client, requiring reflection; a violation is exploitative or harmful and is always unethical.

Competence rule: when client needs fall outside the counselor's training, the counselor seeks consultation, obtains supervised training, or refers, rather than practicing outside the scope of practice defined by license and training.

NBCC requires NCC recertification every five years, with 100 clock hours of continuing education including the ethics hours specified in current NBCC policy.

Multicultural counseling competencies (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992) are organized by three dimensions (awareness of own assumptions, knowledge of the client's worldview, skills) crossed with attitudes, knowledge, and skills.

Sue and Sue's Racial/Cultural Identity Development model: Conformity, Dissonance, Resistance and Immersion, Introspection, Integrative Awareness.

Cross's Nigrescence model stages: Pre-encounter, Encounter, Immersion-Emersion, Internalization, Internalization-Commitment.

Helms's White racial identity statuses: Contact, Disintegration, Reintegration, Pseudo-Independence, Immersion-Emersion, Autonomy.

Microaggression taxonomy: microassault (deliberate and explicit), microinsult (demeaning, often outside awareness), microinvalidation (negating or minimizing the target's experience).

Berry's acculturation strategies: assimilation (host culture only), separation (heritage culture only), integration (both), marginalization (neither).

Sue's worldview model crosses locus of control (internal/external) with locus of responsibility (internal/external), producing four worldview orientations that shape help-seeking and attribution.

Hall's high-context communication relies on implicit, situational, and relational cues; low-context communication relies on explicit verbal content; mismatches are a common source of clinical misjudgment.

Cultural humility differs from static cultural competence: it emphasizes lifelong self-reflection, redress of power imbalances in the clinical relationship, and institutional accountability.

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0-2; object permanence, reflexes to symbolic thought), preoperational (2-7; egocentrism, symbolic play, lack of conservation), concrete operational (7-11; conservation, reversibility, classification), formal operational (11+; abstract and hypothetical reasoning).

Erikson's eight stages: trust vs mistrust (0-1), autonomy vs shame and doubt (1-3), initiative vs guilt (3-6), industry vs inferiority (6-12), identity vs role confusion (12-18), intimacy vs isolation (young adulthood), generativity vs stagnation (middle adulthood), integrity vs despair (later life).

Kohlberg's levels: preconventional (punishment-obedience, instrumental exchange), conventional (interpersonal concordance, law and order), postconventional (social contract, universal ethical principles).

Gilligan critiqued Kohlberg's male-biased justice orientation and proposed an ethic of care with three levels: orientation to individual survival, goodness as self-sacrifice, and nonviolence.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem (the time dimension).

Ainsworth's attachment classifications: secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-ambivalent/resistant, and (later added by Main and Solomon) disorganized-disoriented.

Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is the gap between independent performance and performance with scaffolding from a more capable other; learning is socially mediated.

Baumrind's parenting styles cross warmth with control: authoritative (high/high), authoritarian (low warmth/high control), permissive (high warmth/low control), and neglectful (low/low).

Mahler's separation-individuation phases: normal autism, symbiosis, hatching, practicing, rapprochement, and object constancy.

Super's life-span, life-space theory: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement stages, with career choice as implementation of the self-concept across life roles.

Holland's RIASEC types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional; secondary constructs are congruence (person-environment fit), differentiation, consistency, and vocational identity.

Cognitive Information Processing (Peterson, Sampson, Reardon) uses the CASVE cycle: Communication, Analysis, Synthesis, Valuing, Execution; deficits can occur in self-knowledge, options knowledge, decision skills, or metacognitions.

Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, Hackett): self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations shape interests, which shape goals and actions; supports and barriers moderate the path.

Gottfredson's circumscription and compromise theory: children narrow occupational options by size and power, then sex type; compromise later occurs on prestige first, then interests, then sex type (least willing to compromise).

Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist): satisfaction results from the job's reinforcers matching the person's needs; satisfactoriness results from abilities matching job requirements; correspondence predicts tenure.

Krumboltz's planned happenstance: five qualities that support serendipitous career opportunities are curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism, and risk taking.

Ginzberg's early theory proposed three periods: fantasy, tentative, and realistic (with exploration, crystallization, and specification within the realistic period).

Maslach's burnout dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization/cynicism, and reduced personal accomplishment; it is an occupational phenomenon distinct from depression.

Rogers's core conditions: congruence or genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding; the actualizing tendency is the assumed motive for growth.

Psychoanalytic concepts: transference (client's displaced feelings), countertransference (counselor's reactions), resistance, free association, interpretation, and defense mechanisms such as repression, projection, and rationalization.

Beck's cognitive therapy: the cognitive triad (negative views of self, world, future), automatic thoughts, intermediate beliefs, core schemas, and cognitive distortions addressed through Socratic questioning and behavioral experiments.

Ellis's REBT uses the ABCDE sequence: Activating event, Belief, emotional/behavioral Consequence, Disputing irrational beliefs, and Effective new philosophy; irrational beliefs typically take must, should, and awfulizing forms.

Behavioral interventions: systematic desensitization (Wolpe) pairs relaxation with a graduated fear hierarchy; exposure with response prevention targets avoidance; operant methods use reinforcement schedules, shaping, and token economies.

Linehan's DBT modules: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness; its biosocial theory frames symptoms as emotion vulnerability interacting with an invalidating environment.

Motivational interviewing (Miller & Rollnick): OARS microskills (open questions, affirmations, reflections, summaries), rolling with resistance, and deliberately evoking change talk rather than sustain talk.

Solution-focused therapy (de Shazer, Berg) techniques: miracle question, exception questions, scaling questions, and identifying client strengths and previous solutions.

Minuchin's structural family therapy targets boundaries, subsystems, and hierarchy; dysfunctions include enmeshment, disengagement, and cross-generational coalitions; techniques include joining, enactment, and restructuring.

Bordin's working alliance has three components: goals, tasks, and the emotional bond; the alliance is among the most robust common factors predicting outcome.

ASGW identifies four group types: task/work groups, psychoeducational groups, counseling groups, and psychotherapy groups; leader training and screening requirements increase with the depth of the group.

Tuckman's developmental sequence: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning; Corey's parallel framework is initial, transition, working, and final stages.

Yalom's therapeutic factors include instillation of hope, universality, imparting information, altruism, corrective recapitulation of the primary family group, socializing techniques, imitative behavior, interpersonal learning, cohesiveness, catharsis, and existential factors.

Screening applies a decision rule: exclude or refer members whose needs, risk level, or interpersonal style are likely to be harmed by or to disrupt the specific group format.

Group leaders cannot guarantee confidentiality; informed consent must state that members' disclosures may be shared outside the group and that leaders will address breaches as group norms.

Co-leadership benefits include complementary modeling of interpersonal conflict resolution, coverage during absences, and mutual consultation; costs include coordination time and the need for compatible theoretical orientations.

Common member roles to manage: monopolist, silent member, scapegoat, gatekeeper, blocker, and rescuer; leaders intervene by naming the process and inviting balanced participation.

Lewin's leadership climates: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire; democratic leadership is generally associated with the highest member satisfaction and cohesion.

Closed groups keep fixed membership and build cohesion sequentially; open groups allow revolving membership and require leaders to re-socialize new members into existing norms.

Reliability types: test-retest (stability over time), internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, KR-20, split-half corrected by the Spearman-Brown formula), interrater, and alternate forms.

Standard error of measurement: SEM = SD x square root(1 - r); confidence intervals around an obtained score are built as score plus or minus a multiple of the SEM.

Validity evidence types: content (test blueprint and expert review), criterion (concurrent and predictive), construct (convergent and discriminant), and face validity (appearance, not psychometric evidence).

A test's validity coefficient cannot exceed the square root of its reliability; reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.

Standard score conversions from z: T = 50 + 10z; deviation IQ = 100 + 15z; stanine mean = 5, SD = 2, range 1-9; z = +1 corresponds to the 84th percentile, z = -1 to the 16th.

Normal curve percentages: about 68% of scores fall within one SD of the mean, 95% within two SDs, and 99.7% within three SDs.

Norm-referenced scores compare a person to a standardization sample; criterion-referenced scores compare performance to an absolute standard or skill benchmark.

MMPI-2 interpretation begins with validity scales (L, F, K, plus back-page scales) that flag overreporting, underreporting, and infrequent responding before clinical scales are read.

WAIS-IV yields index scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed, plus FSIQ, all on a metric with mean 100 and SD 15.

ACA Code Section E requires selecting instruments with established validity and appropriate norms for the client population, obtaining informed consent, and maintaining test security.

Design hierarchy for causal inference: randomized experimental (control or comparison group, random assignment) > quasi-experimental (no random assignment) > causal-comparative/ex post facto > correlational > descriptive.

Single-subject designs: A-B (baseline to intervention), A-B-A (withdrawal), A-B-A-B (reversal), and multiple baseline across behaviors, settings, or participants.

Internal validity threats: history, maturation, testing effects, instrumentation, statistical regression to the mean, selection bias, and attrition/mortality.

External validity threats: reactive effects of testing, novelty and Hawthorne effects, sample representativeness, and artificial settings that limit generalizability.

Sampling methods: simple random, systematic, stratified, cluster, convenience, purposive, and snowball; only probability methods support statistical generalization.

Inferential test selection: t-test for two group means, ANOVA for three or more means, chi-square for categorical associations, Pearson r for two continuous variables, and regression for prediction.

Type I error is rejecting a true null hypothesis (probability = alpha, usually .05); Type II error is retaining a false null (probability = beta); statistical power = 1 - beta.

Cohen's conventions for d: 0.2 small, 0.5 medium, 0.8 large; effect size indexes magnitude independently of sample size and p values.

Qualitative traditions: grounded theory (theory building), phenomenology (lived experience), ethnography (culture), case study (bounded system), and consensual qualitative research; trustworthiness criteria are credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

Program evaluation types: needs assessment, formative (process) evaluation, and summative (outcome) evaluation; the CIPP model addresses Context, Input, Process, and Product.