Aashiya Patel

Purpose
Risk is a core element of counselling. The training of risk detection, assessment and management is therefore essential to ensuring effective and ethical practice. This paper aims to outline an applied game for training risk assessment skills.

Design/methodology/approach
The gamification of education and training aims to strengthen engagement with serious material and enhance learning and consolidation by using a motivating medium. This showcase presents “Perspective: Counselling Simulator”, a gamified tool for developing and assessing risk assessment skills in trainee counsellors in the UK.

Findings
The authors present a showcase of the game and its development, plans for further validation and evaluation.

Practical implications
Following ongoing evaluation, the game is intended to be a scalable and accessible tool for trainee counsellors to develop knowledge and self-efficacy in relation to a vital professional skill.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, “Perspective: Counselling Simulator” is the first of its kind as a gamified education and training tool for risk assessment in counselling.

PurposeSelf-efficacy is the bridge between theoretical knowledge of counselling and practical application of effective techniques (Akinlolu and Chukwudi, 2019). Furthermore, risk-assessment and management are fundamental components of counselling training and self-efficacy in these areas is central to ethical practice. Gamification represents an opportunity to increase motivation encouraging users to engage with serious content via an entertaining medium. This study aims to present two studies concerning an outline of the development process and an initial evaluation of "Perspective: Counselling Simulator", a gamified training tool for developing and enhancing self-efficacy in risk-assessment skills in trainee counselling students in the UK. Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents the development and initial user-evaluation of "Perspective", as well as an initial evaluation of the game's capacity to deliver risk-assessment education in a group of UK-based trainee counsellors to British Association for Counselling and Psychology (BACP) standards. FindingsFirstly, mid-development assessment of a prototype-version of the game produced a good system usability score and positive user-feedback, while identifying areas for further improvement. Secondly, data relating to an initial evaluation of the efficacy of the game suggest that the game in its current form is significantly improved in terms of system usability and produces descriptive, albeit not statistically significant improvements to self-reported self-efficacy. Additional feedback was provided by users and further development and evaluation is planned. Originality/ValueThis paper represents, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the first of its kind in developing and evaluating a gamified tool with accessibility and scalability for teaching and consolidating risk-assessment skills of UK counselling students in-line with BACP standards.

Several studies have indicated significant relations between the Big Five personality traits and life satisfaction. However, most of these studies have been carried out on Western samples. The present study aimed to explore the Big Five predictors of life satisfaction in an under-studied sample of Egyptian college students (N = 1,418). They responded to a self-rating scale of life satisfaction and the Arabic Big Five Personality Inventory. Both scales have acceptable to good reliabilities and validities. Men obtained significantly higher mean total scores than did women for extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness, whereas women obtained higher mean total scores than did their male counterparts on neuroticism and agreeableness. In both sexes, all the Pearson correlations between the Big Five and life satisfaction were significant and positive except for neuroticism (negative). The strongest correlation with life satisfaction scores was for neuroticism (negative). Principal components analysis extracted two components in both genders which were labelled: “Positive traits”, and “Well-Being versus neuroticism”. Big Five traits accounted for approximately 22% of the variance in life satisfaction scores among men, and 17% in women. Predictors of life satisfaction were low neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness (men), low neuroticism and conscientiousness (women). It was concluded that personality traits are important for life satisfaction in the present sample of Egyptian college students. By and large, the relationships observed in Egyptian college students reflect the general pattern observed in other samples.

This systematic literature review examines research on religiosity and happiness within the Muslim population. Earlier investigations predominantly focused on Christianity and happiness in Western countries and found a significant positive association. This literature review was conducted to investigate research exploring the relationship between religiosity and happiness among Muslims.
A literature search identified 59 papers examining this relationship between the years 2000 and 2020. Standard quality assessment criteria were used to assess the quality of the selected papers. Each paper was scored by two independent researchers and several of the papers were excluded due to not meeting inclusion criteria or scoring below .55 in the quality assessment. Some 49 studies were included in this literature review, which found a positive correlation between happiness and religiosity within the Muslim population.
Furthermore, most studies posited a significant relationship between the variables. This paper explores this suggested positive correlation further, highlights the limitations of the research, and discusses the implications of the findings.