Relation of Gender to Power and Involvement in Supervision

Audiotaped supervision sessions from 40 master's level counselor trainees and 40 field placement supervisors were used in a content analytic study of the relation of supervisor and trainee gender to supervisory discourse. The Penman Classification Scheme was used to rate the middle 15 min of supervision on power and involvement dimensions. Classification cells were aggregated to yield high-power, low-power, and high-involvement categories. Transformed proportional data and kappa scores from sequential analysis were used in two 2 × 2 (Gender × Role) multivariate analyses of variance to compare dyad types on speaker's use of message categories and patterns of discourse between speakers. Findings indicated that male and female supervisors reinforced female trainees' high-power messages with low-power, encouraging messages significantly less often than for male trainees. Female trainees responded to supervisor low-power, encouraging messages with high-power messages significantly less often than male trainees.