Examination of Counselor Preferences of University Students

The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of university students regarding the gender of the counselor in the preferences of the counselor. For this purpose, face to face interviews were made with 123 university students in 2017-2018 academic year. In the interview, a semi-structured form and structured cv examples were used. The responses to questions were analyzed by descriptive statistics, and the responses to open-ended questions were analyzed by content analysis. According to the results, both male and female participants’ preferences were more on same-sex psychological counselor. In all type of problems, male participants were tend to prefer gender of counselor more than female participants. Participants were generally prefer male counselor in vocational issues. Women participants preferred female counselor in relation to personal issues and familial problems. For the participants, it was seen that the gender of the counselor was the most important issue in friendship / romantic relationship and sexual issues.