Abstract

Undergraduate students are always faced with diverse mental health problems. Nowadays, they can easily access online counseling services to reduce their problems. This research determines the most desired component to develop the online counseling program which aims 1) to study the needs to develop an online counseling program, 2) to compare the needs to develop this program by categorizing with gender, year, academic program, and grade point average (GPA), and 3) to rank the priority needs for developing this program. Participants were 416 undergraduate students who studied in Mahasarakham University and were selected by stratified random sampling. The research instrument was the needs assessment questionnaire to develop this program. The data were analyzed using percentage (%), mean (M), standard deviation (S.D.), independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, and modified priority needs index (PNI_Modified). The results revealed that: 1) the mean of actual condition was at a high level (M = 3.76, S.D. = 0.59) and the mean of the desired condition was at the highest level (M =4.50, S.D.= 0.56) with the significant difference at 0.05 level in all four domains. 2) Undergraduate students from different academic programs exhibited the marked different means of needs for the online counseling program. The scores on actual conditions among students of Mahasarakham Business School were higher than students from others. 3) Students showed the highest priority needs on characteristics of counselor and online application for counseling (PNI_Modified = 0.203). They showed that the secondary needs on characteristics of online counselee (PNI_Modified = 0.192) and therapeutic relationship after online counseling (PNI_Modified = 0.177).

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