NCE-ABE Exam Dumps - NBCC National Certified Counselor Questions and Answers

The Career Development core area includes knowledge of career assessment instruments that help clients clarify interests, values, and career options, especially for decisions such as choosing a college major.

The Self-Directed Search (SDS) is based on Holland’s theory (RIASEC) and helps individuals identify their interest patterns and match them with career fields and college majors consistent with those interests. It is specifically designed for career exploration and educational planning, making it highly appropriate for an 18-year-old choosing a major.

The House-Tree-Person Test is a projective personality assessment and is not designed for career or major selection.

The Adjective Checklist is typically used for personality description or self-perception, not directly for choosing majors or careers.

The Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT) assesses implicit biases or attitudes, not vocational interests or educational choices.

Because the SDS directly links interests to college majors and occupations, the most helpful tool for this student’s decision-making is B. Self-Directed Search.

In the Assessment and Testing core area, counselors are expected to recognize common diagnostic features of mental disorders to inform screening, referral, and conceptualization (not to replace full diagnosis).

For generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), hallmark symptoms include:

Excessive anxiety and worry about a variety of events or activities,

Difficulty controlling the worry,

Physical and cognitive symptoms such as:

Restlessness or feeling keyed up/on edge,

Being easily fatigued,

Difficulty concentrating,

Irritability,

Muscle tension,

Sleep disturbance.

Thus, restlessness (Option B) is a classic symptom associated with GAD.

The other options fit different or nonspecific issues:

A. Lack of hobbies is not a diagnostic criterion; it may relate to lifestyle, depression, or other factors but is not specific to GAD.

C. Rechecking locked doors is more characteristic of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where compulsive checking behaviors respond to intrusive obsessions.

D. Pressured speech is typically associated with mania or hypomania, not GAD.

Therefore, B is the correct symptom associated with generalized anxiety disorder.

In the Assessment and Testing core area, counselors are expected to understand different types of tests, including the distinction between maximum performance measures (e.g., ability, aptitude, achievement) and typical performance measures (e.g., personality, interests, attitudes, self-concept).

Ability tests (including aptitude and achievement) are designed so that each item has one correct answer. They measure how well a person can perform on tasks that have objectively right or wrong responses.

Measures of personality, interest, and self-concept do not have right or wrong answers; they assess typical ways of thinking, feeling, behaving, or preferences.

Because the question states that each item has only one correct answer, this clearly describes a measure of ability, making B the correct answer.

Within Counseling and Helping Relationships, CACREP highlights core conditions from person-centered theory: empathy, unconditional positive regard, and genuineness (also called congruence).

Genuineness/congruence means the counselor’s outer responses match their inner experience—they are authentic, real, and not putting on a professional façade.

Among the options, “congruence” (B) is the technical term that directly corresponds to genuineness.

Paraphrasing (A) and empathic responding (D) are important attending and empathy skills, but they do not automatically mean the counselor is genuine. Self-disclosure (C) can be a tool that may express genuineness, but it is not, by itself, the definition of genuineness and can even be misused.

Therefore, the counselor behavior that most clearly and directly demonstrates genuineness is B. Congruence.

The Counselor Work Behavior Areas emphasize that counselors must be able to address grief, loss, and existential concerns, including how clients make meaning of life events and their own existence. When a client says they are trying to make sense of their purpose in life after a loss, the counselor’s primary focus should be on the existential and meaning-making issues the client is directly raising.

Option A, the purpose of human existence, most closely represents exploring the client’s deeper questions about:

Meaning, purpose, and significance in life.

How the loss affects his understanding of why he is here and what his life is about.

His beliefs, values, and worldview related to life, death, and purpose.

This kind of exploration is consistent with clinical expectations that counselors help clients process existential themes (such as meaning, isolation, freedom, mortality) that often emerge following significant loss.

Why the other options are not the best choice:

B. Different denominations within the church – Focusing on denominational differences is more about institutional structures and doctrine than the client’s personal questions about purpose and meaning.

C. The client's history of volunteer experiences – This could be relevant later (e.g., to explore where he has found meaning), but it is secondary to directly exploring the core existential question he is already asking.

D. The number of deaths within the client's family – This is factual and may be relevant in assessment, but it does not directly address his expressed need to understand his purpose in life.

This approach reflects the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Area that calls for sensitivity to loss, spirituality, and meaning-making and encourages counselors to meet clients at the level of the concerns they present.

In assessment, counselors are expected to understand basic statistics used to interpret test scores. The standard deviation is the measure that indicates, on average, how far individual scores fall from the mean of a distribution. It is a key index of variability around the average.

When the standard deviation is small, scores cluster closely around the mean.

When it is large, scores are more spread out.

Thus, option C. Standard deviation is correct.

Why the others are incorrect:

A. Correlation coefficient measures the degree and direction of relationship between two variables, not the average distance from the mean.

B. Range is the difference between the highest and lowest score; it is a simple measure of spread but does not reflect the average distance of scores from the mean.

D. Standard score (e.g., z-score, T-score) is a transformed score that indicates how far an individual score lies from the mean in standard deviation units, but it is not the name of the variability index itself.

Knowledge of how to interpret scores using concepts like the mean and standard deviation is part of Intake, Assessment and Diagnosis, as counselors must interpret test results accurately to inform case understanding and decision-making.

When working with older adults in group counseling, counselors must adapt interventions and structure to the developmental stage, life circumstances, and typical perspectives of this population. Older persons often benefit from:

Clear structure and purpose in group activities

Concrete, goal-directed tasks

A sense of predictability and safety in the group process

Option A, increasing the use of purpose-specific, structured group activities, aligns well with these needs and is consistent with best practices for group work with older adults.

B is inappropriate: pre-group screening is especially important with older persons to consider cognitive, emotional, physical, and interpersonal factors and to ensure appropriate group composition.

C overemphasizes developing new interpersonal skills; while growth is possible and important, many older adults bring extensive life experience, and group work often focuses more on support, coping with transitions, loss, health changes, and life review than on entirely new humanistic skill sets.

D is contrary to established practice: personal reminiscence and life review are often highly therapeutic and developmentally appropriate for older adults, and should usually be supported, not avoided.

Therefore, the most appropriate action for a counselor is to increase structured, purpose-specific activities, making A the correct answer.

In the Intake, Assessment and Diagnosis domain, counselors are expected to gather history, duration, and prior episodes of symptoms to determine the most accurate diagnosis using established diagnostic criteria (e.g., DSM-5-TR depressive disorders).

The client currently meets criteria for a major depressive episode: hopelessness, worthlessness, impaired concentration, and suicidal ideation occurring nearly every day for at least two weeks.

The question also states the client previously experienced the same symptoms during college. This history of a prior major depressive episode means the current presentation is not a single episode but part of a pattern of recurring episodes.

Therefore, the appropriate diagnosis is:

A. major depressive disorder, recurrent

Why the other options are not the best fit:

B. major depressive disorder, single episode – incorrect because the client has had more than one episode (current plus college years).

C. persistent depressive disorder – this requires a chronic depressed mood over at least two years, typically less episodic and more continuous than what is described.

D. bipolar I disorder – requires at least one manic episode; there is no indication of manic or hypomanic symptoms.

Accurately distinguishing between single-episode and recurrent disorders reflects the counselor’s responsibility to integrate symptom history and duration into a diagnostic formulation, as emphasized in the NBCC work behavior expectations for assessment and diagnosis.

In family and systems counseling, NBCC Counselor Work Behavior Areas highlight the importance of understanding circular causality—the idea that behavior in a system is both a cause and an effect of other members’ behaviors, forming interactional patterns rather than simple “A causes B” chains.

Option B best reflects this systemic, circular view: an older sibling’s rebellious behavior has drawn parental attention and shaped the family pattern; the younger sibling then steals to impress the older sibling and participate in that same pattern of rebelliousness and attention. The younger sibling’s behavior is influenced by the existing family dynamic, and in turn, that behavior will further affect the family’s interactions, reinforcing or modifying the pattern. This mutual, looping influence exemplifies circular causality.

Option A describes a largely linear chain: personal anxiety → yoga and avoidance. The interaction pattern within a system is not clearly illustrated.

Option C is also linear: cheating → improved chances of passing → college admission; it does not show reciprocal influence between people in a system.

Option D reflects ambivalence and a complex relationship, but it does not clearly illustrate a pattern of mutual, cyclical influence among system members.

NBCC’s expectations for counseling skills and interventions in systemic work include recognizing and working with these circular patterns, rather than focusing solely on linear “cause–effect” explanations for a single individual’s behavior.

Kohlberg’s theory states that young children (preschool age) typically operate at the preconventional level of moral development. At this level, moral judgments are based mainly on the consequences of actions, especially punishment and reward. Children see behaviors as “good” or “bad” depending on what happens afterward, not based on internalized values or concern for relationships.

Option B reflects this: decisions based on the outcomes of specific acts (e.g., “If I do this, will I get in trouble or get a reward?”).

Options A, C, and D reflect more advanced moral reasoning: peer influence, concern for relationships, and ethical principles—all of which appear later in Kohlberg’s stages. Understanding developmental theories like Kohlberg’s helps counselors conceptualize client behavior across the lifespan, which fits within Areas of Clinical Focus in the NBCC Counselor Work Behavior framework.