NBCC NCE-ABE - National Counselor Examination

In the Counseling Skills and Interventions domain, family counselors are expected to explore interactional patterns and multigenerational influences to understand how families function as systems. Discussing extended family behaviors helps the counselor and family members:

Identify repeated patterns of interaction and expectations across generations.

Understand implicit rules, roles, and norms that guide behavior in the family system.

Recognize how these norms influence current conflicts, alliances, and communication styles.

This directly aligns with:

D. clarify familial behavior norms.

Why the other options are less accurate:

A. trace the origins of inappropriate behaviors – while understanding patterns over time may shed light on how certain behaviors developed, the primary systemic focus is on current norms and patterns, not on blaming or pinpointing an “origin.”

B. determine who else should be in counseling – extended family discussions may occasionally inform decisions about including others, but this is not the primary goal.

C. identify model family members – the purpose is not to label some members as “models” but to understand the overall system and its norms.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that effective family counseling interventions involve examining family structure, patterns, and norms, including those influenced by extended family systems, to guide intervention planning.

The counselor’s role in intake and assessment includes identifying symptom patterns, duration, and functional impairment to form a preliminary diagnostic impression. Persistent and excessive worry occurring for at least six months, accompanied by symptoms such as muscle tension and difficulty concentrating, is characteristic of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Counselors must evaluate duration, symptom clusters, and context to differentiate GAD from other anxiety- or stress-related conditions.

When a client brings up assisted suicide, the counselor is dealing with a situation that involves serious ethical, legal, and clinical considerations. The NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that counselors must know and follow applicable laws, adhere to ethical standards, and seek supervision or consultation when facing complex or high-risk situations.

The best first step is Option A: seek professional and legal consultation/supervision. This helps the counselor clarify:

Legal requirements in their jurisdiction regarding assisted suicide.

Ethical obligations related to client safety, autonomy, and confidentiality.

Appropriate clinical responses and documentation.

Option B (maintain confidentiality) is important but not an action step and may need to be reconsidered if there is clear risk of self-harm. Option C (inform the family) could violate confidentiality without proper legal/ethical grounding. Option D (review palliative medications) is outside the counselor’s scope. Consulting first allows the counselor to proceed in an informed, ethical, and legally sound manner.

This client is:

In advanced age with declining health and a recent heart attack.

Expressing fears about dying alone and questions about how much time he has left.

Reflecting on life choices and losses (“all he did to provide for his family”).

These features point strongly to end-of-life concerns, such as mortality, meaning, unresolved feelings, and how to live meaningfully in the time remaining. Thus, A. End-of-life issues is the most central and clinically indicated focus.

Why the others are secondary or less indicated:

B. Repairing family relationships – while potentially helpful, he states he has “accepted” those losses; that may be explored within end-of-life work, but the primary clinical task is addressing his fears and meaning-making around death.

C. Reviewing will and health care directives – important practically, but this is more of a legal/administrative task than the core counseling focus.

D. Developing and expanding support networks – can be part of the work, especially given fears of dying alone, but it is one element within the broader focus on end-of-life adjustment rather than the central organizing theme.

NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas include attending to developmental and life-stage issues, including older adulthood and end-of-life, and helping clients cope with illness, mortality, and existential concerns.

Holland’s theory of vocational personalities describes the Enterprising type as someone who enjoys leading, persuading, selling, influencing others, and seeking status or power. These individuals often gravitate toward roles involving management, politics, sales, or entrepreneurship.

Option A (Enterprising) matches the description of a person who enjoys verbal persuasion to gain power and social status.

Realistic (B) types prefer hands-on, practical activities.

Conventional (C) types prefer structured, orderly, detail-oriented tasks.

Social (D) types enjoy helping, teaching, and supporting others more than seeking power or status.

Understanding Holland’s types is part of career and vocational conceptualization, which falls under Areas of Clinical Focus in the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas.

In clinical work, counselors must understand how definitions of “normal” and “abnormal” can vary across cultures and theoretical perspectives.

Cultural relativism holds that:

There is no single universal standard of normality.

Behavior is understood in the context of the values, norms, and expectations of a particular culture or context.

What is considered healthy or deviant depends on culturally shaped value systems.

Thus, “normal” under cultural relativism is best captured by:

D. Adherence to contextual values – that is, behavior is normal when it fits the values and norms of the specific cultural context in which the person lives.

Why the others are not correct under cultural relativism:

A. Conformity to social expectations – close, but too general; it doesn’t explicitly reference the cultural-contextual framework that relativism emphasizes.

B. Ideal state of self-actualization – reflects more of a humanistic view, not cultural relativism.

C. Incongruence between behaviors and ideals – describes distress or conflict, not a definition of normality.

Counselors are expected to incorporate this understanding when assessing behavior and distress across diverse populations, avoiding imposing one culture’s standards on another.

The term that encompasses a client’s background, values, morals, traditions, and ways of living within a social context is culture.2 Culture is commonly understood as the shared patterns of beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that a group uses to cope with the world and pass on to future generations. It shapes:

Worldview and meaning-making

Interpersonal expectations and communication styles

Attitudes toward counseling, mental health, and help-seeking

Thus, Option B (culture) is correct.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Individualism – Refers to a value orientation emphasizing personal autonomy, independence, and self-reliance. It is one possible cultural value, not the full description of a client’s total human experience.

C. Collectivism – The opposite value orientation to individualism, emphasizing group harmony, interdependence, and group goals. Again, it is one type of cultural value, not the overarching construct.

D. Race – Refers to a category often (problematically) based on physical characteristics and socially constructed groupings. While race can influence experience and oppression, it does not by itself encompass the entirety of background, values, morals, and traditions; those are more fully covered by the broader concept of culture.2

In the Professional Practice and Ethics area, NBCC highlights that ethically competent counselors must understand and respect clients’ cultural contexts, integrating these into assessment, case conceptualization, and intervention.

Counselors are expected to understand how to convert between different score scales (standard scores and raw scores) using the logic of z scores.

Step 1: Find the z score of the student’s standard score.

Standard-score mean = 76

Standard-score standard deviation = 7

Student’s score = 69

z=X−μσ=69−767=−77=−1z = \frac{X - \mu}{\sigma} = \frac{69 - 76}{7} = \frac{-7}{7} = -1z=σX−μ​=769−76​=7−7​=−1

So the student is one standard deviation below the mean (z = -1).

Step 2: Convert that z score back to the original raw-score distribution.

Original mean = 25

Original standard deviation = 5

Xraw=μraw+z⋅σraw=25+(−1)⋅5=25−5=20X_{\text{raw}} = \mu_{\text{raw}} + z \cdot \sigma_{\text{raw}} = 25 + (-1) \cdot 5 = 25 - 5 = 20Xraw​=μraw​+z⋅σraw​=25+(−1)⋅5=25−5=20

So the corresponding raw score is 20, which is option D.

This kind of conversion is part of basic testing and measurement knowledge that supports accurate assessment and communication of test results.

Professional practice and ethics expectations include understanding ethical responsibilities when counselors participate in or conduct research. In a collaborative research project, while all researchers share ethical obligations, the primary responsibility for ensuring the protection of participants’ legal and ethical rights lies with the principal investigator (PI).

The PI is responsible for:

Ensuring informed consent procedures

Safeguarding confidentiality and data security

Complying with institutional and legal requirements

Overseeing the ethical conduct of all aspects of the project

Option B (author of the proposal) does not necessarily have ongoing responsibility if they are not the PI.

Option C (the counselor who agrees to accept responsibility) is too vague; specific responsibility lies with designated roles and typically centers on the PI.

Option D (state licensure board) regulates professional conduct broadly but does not manage the day-to-day ethical implementation of a specific research project.

Therefore, the correct answer is A, the principal investigator.

In assessment and testing, counselors must understand how different standardized scoring systems relate to one another in a normal distribution so they can interpret results accurately for clients.

A z score of 1 is one standard deviation above the mean. In a normal distribution, this corresponds to about the 84th percentile.

A T score typically has a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. One standard deviation above the mean (z = 1) equals a T score of 60.

A percentile rank of 84 also corresponds to being about one standard deviation above the mean in a normal distribution.

So options A, B, and C all describe roughly the same relative position in the distribution: one standard deviation above the mean.

A stanine scale ranges from 1 to 9, with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of about 2. A stanine of 5 represents the average range (around the mean), not one standard deviation above it. A score one standard deviation above the mean would fall closer to stanine 7, not 5.

Therefore, stanine of 5 (D) is not equivalent to the other three scores and is the correct answer.