Students' preferences for male or female counselors for social and educational problems

Fifty-eight male and 66 female junior high school students were examined to determine their preferences for sex of counselor under personal/social and educational hypothetical counseling situations. Girls demonstrated a definite same-sex preference for both counseling situations, while boys preferred male counselors for personal/social counseling and had opposite-sex preferences for educational counseling. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of earlier contradictory results from research on college students.