Faculty and student perceptions of academic counselling services at an academic health science center.

There are limited data on support services that facilitate students' academic success at academic health science centres. The authors explored faculty and students' perceptions of available academic counselling services (ACS) at an academic health science centre in the Southeastern United States. Participants were surveyed in May and June of 2011 regarding the ACS available at the institution. Fifty-nine percent of faculty respondents (N = 471) agreed that academic counselling was a necessary part of the institution, but only 26 % reported knowledge of how to refer students for academic counselling. Only 18 % stated they had previously referred a student for services. Fifty-four percent of student respondents (N = 360) agreed that academic counselling was a necessary part of the institution and 60 % stated that they would seek these services if needed. However, only 35 % of students reported that they were aware of how to access the services. These findings suggest a discrepancy between the belief that academic support services have value and their knowledge about how to utilize the services. It is recommended that academic health science centres consider the promotion of available academic support services amongst both faculty and students when designing and implementing programmes to reduce this potential obstacle to service utilization.

Social desirability, defense styles, and the Children's Role Inventory scale.

This investigation was designed to answer several research questions. First, using each participant's dominant score to place that individual into one of the four Children's Role Inventory categories, what would be the distribution of college students across the categories? Second, is there a relationship between scores on scales of the Children's Role Inventory and (a) on the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale and (b) on scales of the Defense Style Questionnaire? 236 undergraduate students at a southern university completed the above questionnaires. The distribution of participants over Children's Role Inventory categories was Hero 179, Mascot 41, Scapegoat 1, Lost Child 9, and Not Classified 6. After Bonferroni correction, significant positive but small correlations were reported between the Hero Scale of the Children's Role Inventory and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, as well as between the Hero Scale of the Children's Role Inventory and the Adaptive Scale of the Defense Style Questionnaire.