Young people’s experiences of setting and monitoring goals in school counselling

Duncan, C., Hayes, J., & Cooper, M. (2025). Young people’s experiences of setting and monitoring goals in school-based counselling: A thematic analysis. Psycholog y and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 00, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12581

Rationale

• Purpose: The study aimed to address the gap in research regarding young people’s experiences with goal setting and monitoring in school-based counseling, especially given the increasing prevalence of mental health issues among young people and the mixed effectiveness of school-based counseling interventions.  
• Knowledge Gap: While the benefits of goal setting and monitoring have been reported in adult literature (e.g., Austin & Vancouver, 1996), research on young people’s perspectives is limited.  
• Addressing the Gap: This study contributes new knowledge by directly exploring the experiences of young people with a specific goal-setting tool (the GBO tool) in the context of school-based counseling.  
• Research Questions:
  • What are young people’s experiences of setting goals in school-based counseling?  
  • What are young people’s experiences of monitoring goal progress in school-based counseling?  

Method

• Sample: 19 young people (predominantly female, 89.5%) aged 13-15 years, who had completed school-based counseling and explicitly set and monitored goals.  
• Recruitment Context: Participants were recruited from four secondary schools in London, UK, each with its own school-based humanistic counsellor.  
• Data Collection: Semi-structured interviews were conducted, focusing on the young people’s experiences of setting and monitoring goals using the GBO tool.  
• Data Analysis: The data underwent reflexive thematic analysis, involving the identification, analysis, and reporting of patterns (themes) within the interview transcripts.  

Results

• Key Themes: 14 themes emerged from the data analysis, reflecting both helpful and unhelpful aspects of working with goals.  
• Examples of Themes:
  • Challenges in Goal Setting: Difficulty in formulating goals, forgetting goals, and the evolving nature of goals over time. “Setting specific goals was quite hard because it was kind of… trying to focus on three aspects of my life… when there’s so many things.”  
  • Complexity of Capturing Progress: The challenge of quantifying goal progress with a number and the potential preference for using words to capture complexity.   “I didn’t really know where to scale it. Because I was like, ‘one is too like… bad’… and I wasn’t sure if like, ten was ‘too good’ and five… I’m not sure – I wasn’t sure about… numbers and like… what they scaled out as.”  
  • Impact on Motivation: Goal monitoring could contribute to or detract from motivation, depending on perceived progress.   “I would get like, happy and I’d think to myself, ‘OK, I’m making more progress’. But if I’m going down… if the line is going down… then, of course, it kind of… gets me depressed that I haven’t made any progress.”  
  • Preferences and Flexibility in Goal Monitoring: Young people expressed varied preferences for the frequency of goal monitoring, with some finding weekly monitoring too frequent.   “I think it was nice to have things quantified and put into numbers.”  
  • Usefulness of the GBO Tool: The GBO tool was perceived as a conversational tool, a tangible representation of progress, and a means of increasing insight and focusing the therapeutic work.   “It made sense but then I was just thinking, ‘I… don’t know how to put it in a scale’ because it I guess it’s all just… different things and it’s not like I can just pinpoint like, put it there and then like it’s there – it’s like… two or something. It was… I think it was more of like, ‘well, in some subjects I can concentrate’… ‘and some other ones I can’t’. So, I couldn’t really… put that all… together and just put it down on a piece of paper.”  

Insight

• Novel Findings: The study provides novel insights into the nuanced experiences of young people with goal setting and monitoring in school-based counseling, highlighting the potential challenges and benefits.  
• Contribution to Understanding: The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how goal-oriented practices are perceived and experienced by young people, emphasizing the need for individualized approaches.  
• Relation to Previous Research: The study aligns with previous research on adult clients (e.g., Di Malta et al., 2019) that found mixed experiences with goal-oriented practices.  
• Future Research Directions: Future research could explore the impact of different goal-setting and monitoring approaches on therapeutic outcomes for young people and investigate the influence of factors such as age, gender, and cultural background on goal-related experiences.  

Clinical Implications

• Impact on Practice: The findings suggest that practitioners should offer young people choice and flexibility in how they set and monitor goals, ensuring the process is collaborative and sensitive to individual needs.  
• Recommendations:
  • Provide clear explanations of the purpose and process of goal setting and monitoring.  
  • Offer choices in the frequency and method of monitoring progress (e.g., using numbers or words).  
  • Be attentive to the potential impact of goal setting and monitoring on motivation and self-esteem.  
  • Use clinical judgment to determine when goal setting and monitoring might be helpful or unhelpful.  
• Potential Benefits and Challenges: Implementing these findings could lead to more effective and client-centered counseling for young people, but it may also require additional training and resources for practitioners.  

Strengths

• Rigorous Data Collection and Analysis: The study employed a well-established qualitative approach (reflexive thematic analysis) and involved multiple researchers in the analysis process to enhance trustworthiness.  
• Participant Engagement: The use of semi-structured interviews allowed for in-depth exploration of the young people’s experiences and perspectives.  
• Clarity of Presentation: The findings are presented in a clear and organized manner, with illustrative quotes from participants to support the identified themes.  

Limitations

• Sample Size: The sample size was relatively small (19 participants) and predominantly female, which may limit the generalizability of the findings.  
• Sampling Bias: The participants were recruited from a specific context (school-based counseling) and may not represent the experiences of young people in other settings.  

Socratic Questions

• How might the findings of this study influence the way you approach goal setting and monitoring with young clients in your future practice?
• What are some alternative interpretations of the findings, and how might these different perspectives shape clinical practice?
• How could you adapt the recommendations from this study to different counseling contexts or to working with diverse populations of young people?
• What ethical considerations should be taken into account when setting and monitoring goals with young people in therapy?
• How might the use of technology be incorporated into goal setting and monitoring to enhance engagement and effectiveness for young clients?

References

Austin, J. T., & Vancouver, J. B. (1996). Goal constructs in psychology: Structure, process, and content. Psychological Bulletin, 120(3), 338–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.120.3.338

Duncan, C., Hayes, J., & Cooper, M. (2025). Young people’s experiences of setting and monitoring goals in school-based counselling: A thematic analysis. Psycholog y and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 00, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12581