Comparison of Working Alliances, Session Evaluations, and Outcomes between Counseling Using the Metaverse and Video Conferencing for Clients with Social Anxiety

This study compared counseling conducted via metaverse and video conferencing in terms of clients' working alliances, session evaluations, and counseling outcomes for individuals with social anxiety.Twenty adults with moderate to high levels of social anxiety were assigned to one of two groups, each undergoing eight sessions of either metaverse or video counseling.Pre-and postassessments were conducted to measure the severity of the presenting problem and social anxiety, along with evaluations of working alliances, session depth, and smoothness immediately following sessions 2, 5, and 8.The results indicated no significant differences in post-scores of presenting problem severity and client satisfaction between groups.Also, pre-post changes in problem severity were not significant, although the effect size (Cohen's d) was higher in the metaverse group.However, the post-score for social anxiety in the video counseling group was significantly lower than in the metaverse group.Additionally, pre-post score changes in social anxiety were significant only in the video counseling group and not in the metaverse group.Differences in working alliances and session evaluations between the groups were not statistically significant across the three sessions; however, score variations between the groups suggest intriguing patterns that warrant further qualitative investigation.These findings suggest that metaverse counseling may offer similar counseling outcomes and processes comparable to video counseling for socially anxious adults, except for the outcome of social anxiety reduction.