Hope as a Predictor of School Counselors’ Ethical and Legal Self-Efficacy

Recently, hope has emerged as an important factor predicting school counselors’ overall self-efficacy. Scholars have yet to explore whether hope predicts school counselors’ ethical and legal self-efficacy, specifically. We conducted a hierarchical regression with a sample of 228 school counselors to determine whether years of experience and hope predicted their ethical and legal self-efficacy. We examined whether total years of experience predicted school counselors’ ethical and legal self-efficacy. We then added hope to the model to determine whether hope predicted ethical and legal self-efficacy beyond years of experience. Our findings indicated that school counselors’ years of experience and hope both significantly predicted their ethical and legal self-efficacy. Hope significantly predicted school counselors’ ethical and legal self-efficacy to a larger degree than years of experience. Our findings add to the literature regarding school counselors’ hope and ethical and legal self-efficacy. We provide implications for school counseling practice, preparation, and future research.