Guidance and Counseling Needs of Students

Aims: This study aimed to determine the guidance and counseling needs of students in Islamic Azad University of Dezful branch, Khozestan, Iran.

For this purpose, 375 students were selected via stratified random method among all students of this branch. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire consisting of 41 items with four-grade Likert scale which questioned the students’ opinions about the severity of their need for guidance and counseling in various areas. Reliability of the tool was confirmed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

Results showed that the average priority of student's counseling needs in order of importance was: personal development area (4.49), compromising-adaptive area (3.77), educational-academic area (3.01), vocational area (2.13), and family and marriage area (1.61). Other findings showed that there is a significant difference in some areas between male and female students in guidance and counseling needs (P

Five needs that students in all areas have the most need for guidance and counseling services include: familiarizing with the country's job opportunities, the method of finding work in the community, the method of increasing the concentration of attention, the way of dealing with life problems and the happy way to was living. Recommended that universities and higher education institutes consider these finding in designing university counseling programs in order to facilitate student's academic achievement and to prevent their academic failures.