Graduate student preferences of social power use in clinical supervision

The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the preferences and perceptions of graduate student supervisees when rating the five bases of social power use of their supervisors in clinical speech-language pathology. When used in supervision, the supervisee may perceive some bases to be positive in outcome and some to be negative. Social power refers to the ability of one individual to influence the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of another individual. French and Raven created the five bases of social power in 1959 in order to describe how individuals or groups interact with one another (Raven, 2008). The five bases of social power include coercive, reward, expert, legitimate and referent. Results indicated that graduate supervisees preferred more referent power, reward power and expert power than was used by their current supervisor. Results also demonstrated graduate supervisees would prefer less coercive power and legitimate power to be used by their supervisors in clinical supervision.