Kyung-eun Kim and Ye-seul Min
Although clinical supervision is essential to professional development, many supervisees withhold information about themselves, clients, or the supervision process. Supervisee nondisclosure has been known to negatively impact the learning experience of supervision, and to ultimately harm clients. What makes supervisees withdraw from sharing important information in the supervisory session? Does the nondisclosure actually harm supervisory outcomes? Although individual studies provide insightful understanding of supervisee nondisclosure related variables, as to our knowledge there is no current study that attempts to synthesize these results. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between supervisee nondisclosure and supervision process/outcome variables through meta-analysis. Specifically, process variables include the supervisory working alliance, perceived supervisor style/competence, and supervisee related factors (competence, attachment style, anxiety, shame). Outcome variables include self-efficacy and supervision satisfaction. The authors aim to provide comprehensive meta-analytic data on nondisclosure, hoping that this study will offer empirical support in building a model of supervisee nondisclosure. By searching major databases, we obtained 49 articles/unpublished dissertations that met our inclusion criteria. The authors independently completed the initial coding, and then discussed discrepancies until reaching consensus. Following meta-analytic procedures, we calculated the effect size using the weighted correlation coefficients, and tested for homogeneity of the effect size variance. Publication bias was assessed through funnel plots. Our results provide empiric support for the close correlation of supervisee nondisclosure and supervision process/outcome, suggesting that recognizing and attending to supervisee nondisclosure may be a crucial part of effective supervision.
