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Online counseling is a delivery of therapeutic interventions in cyberspace where there are communication between trained professional counselors and clients using electronic communication technologies such as telephone, computer, email, internet as mediators in separate places. The provision of counseling services via telephone (also known as tele-counseling) is relatively new and the guiding policies are still being drafted by the local governing body of counseling profession. Hence, the main objective of this qualitative study is to explore expert perceptions of the feasibility of counseling provision via telephone, also known as tele-counseling. A total of five local experts in the field of counseling were involved as the respondents of this study. Based on the thematic analysis of the data, there were three main themes generated from the objectives of this study: (i) acceptance of tele-counseling services, (ii) advantages of tele-counseling services and (iii) limitations of tele-counseling services. The findings suggest that tele-counseling should be considered as an alternative to the conventional face-to-face counseling services in Malaysia. However, despite all the advantages it may offer, counselors who intend to engage in providing this service must also consider the potential limitations of its implementation.

The competency of multicultural counselling is an aspect which needs to be mastered by a counsellor in order to provide good counselling services to clients especially when dealing with clients of different culture. The purpose of this research is to examine the validity and reliability of the Multicultural Counselling Competencies Scale which was developed based on the local culture by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A total of 290 final year students participating in the first-degree counselling program from six public universities were selected randomly. The results of the analysis showed that the fit value for the comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker Lewis index (TLI), and normed fit index (NFI) respectively had fulfilled the fit value of 0.90 and above as suggested by the literature. The analysis also showed the average variance extracted (AVE) values for all three constructs were 0.669 (awareness), 0.764 (skills) and 0.642 (knowledge) respectively, indicating the validity convergent and discriminant reliability were achieved. CFA analysis has removed 7 out of 26 original items due to low loading factor. Overall, CFA analysis has successfully proven that competencies of multicultural counselling questionnaire as a multidimensional construct as it has been theorized and is appropriate for measuring the competencies of multicultural counselling in Malaysia.