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Counseling via Avatar: Professional Practice in Virtual Worlds

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Abstract

Professional counselors (n = 5) from the United States (2), Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands were interviewed about the provision of counseling services in the multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) Second Life (SL). Using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) method, qualitative data analysis yielded four themes: (i) encapsulating the immersive experience inherent in virtual worlds, (ii) contributions to successful avatar-based counseling, (iii) the practice of MUVE counseling, and (iv) practitioners’ pioneering spirit. This study contributes to distance counseling knowledge and lays the foundation for future avatar-based counseling research and practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Counseling, The University of Texas at Tyler, 3900 University Blvd, Tyler, TX, 75799, USA

    Karl J. Witt & Christine McNichols

  2. Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

    Marvarene Oliver

Authors
  1. Karl J. Witt
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  2. Marvarene Oliver
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  3. Christine McNichols
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Correspondence to Karl J. Witt.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

This article is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation.

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Witt, K.J., Oliver, M. & McNichols, C. Counseling via Avatar: Professional Practice in Virtual Worlds. Int J Adv Counselling 38, 218–236 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-016-9269-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-016-9269-4

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