With the advent of federal legislation in the area of public education for hardieapped students, there have been concerns expressed about the role of the counselor in meeting the needs of this group. This investigation focused on self-identified handicapped and non-handicapped high school seniors' perception of three areas of counseling: 1. continuing education; 2. finding employment; and 3. influencing post-high school plans.

The research method utilized a secondary analysis of data contained in the data set High School and Beyond (1980). The sample consisted of 411 self-identified handicapped high school senior students from public secondary schools who had participated in a special program for physically or educationally handicapped high school students within the school. An equal number of non-handicapped high school senior students were randomly selected for the comparison group. Non-parametric statistical tests, Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskall-Wallis 1-way ANOVA, were used to analyze six hypothesis.

Of six null hypotheses, four were accepted and two were rejected. Rejection of the two null hypotheses led to the following conclusions. The handicapped group perceived counselors as influencing their post-high school plans more than the non-handicapped group. Also, the handicapped group perceived differences in counselor influences based on their primary handicapping condition.