Effects of trainee expectancies and specific instructions on counselling skill acquisition.

Abstract

The present study entailed an examination of the acquisition of counselling skill by inexperienced, undergraduate counsellor trainees as a function of brief, specific instructions on how to counsel, and of the participants' prclraining expectancies pertaining to nondirectivc versus directive counselling style. The Reisman Direction-Unconscious motivation scale was used to identify high versus low directivencss expectancy participants, and the members of each of these iwo groups were randomly assigned to training or control conditions. The training group showed significant training gains on two microcounselling criteria, while the directiveness expectancy variable had no significant effect. The findings vis-a-vis the brief instructions illustrate that a significant training gain can be induced simply by alerting trainees to the evaluative criteria. It was concluded that such instructions could be used both as a highly efficient means of instituting initial counselling skill in paraprofessional workers, and as an apt control in assessing the effect of relatively more extensive counsellor training programs.Substantial research evidence of the effectiveness of human relations training (Carkhuff, 1969) and microcounselling (Ivey, 1971) for training lay and professional counsellors has accumulated in recent years (e.g., Butler & Hansen, 1973;Di Mattia & Arndt, 1974; Ivey, Normington, Miller, Morrell & Haase, 1968). Although these studies indicate that both training methods result in significant gains when trainees are compared with control subjects who receive no training, most of the studies share a design limitation which makes it impossible to separate the effect of the training itself from the effect of information about evaluation criteria. Trainees' progress has usually been evaluated using the same dimensions for the content of training as for rating the acquisition of that training. This raises the possibility that the training gains result, in whole or in part, from the trainees' development of an accurate expectancy set about the evaluation criteria (Resnikoff, 1972; Toukmanian, Capelle & Rennie, This paper is based on a thesis submitted by Georgia K. Quartaro in partial fulfillment of the M.A. degree requirements of York University. The study was supported by Canada Council grant //S74-1820 awarded to D. Rennie and S. Toukmanian. The authors are deeply indebted to Mirka Ondracek of the Institute for Behavioural Research, York University, for her assistance in the data analyses. We also wish to thank John Reisman of DePaul University for giving us permission to modify his Direction-Unconscious motivation scale for use in this study. Requests for reprints should be sent to David I-

Changes in counseling skills during graduate and undergraduate study.

“…Some undergraduates in this study mentioned interviewing for information in their social psychology classes, whereas others expressed a familiarity with Rogerian humanistic psychology. Rappaport, Gross, and Lepper (1973) and Quartaro and Rennie (1983) have shown that specific instructions on interviewing enable college student volunteers to produce appropriate verbal interviewing behavior. It seems likely that some of the undergraduate counselors either directly or indirectly obtained information on prescribed counselor behavior and that this lead to some changes in postyear interview verbal responses.…”

A narrative and meta-analytic review of helping skills training: Time to revive a dormant area of inquiry.

“…Furthermore, a few studies were found that investigated characteristics of trainees who profit most from training. These studies investigated dominance (Chasnoff, 1976), sex (Ronnestad, 1977), conceptual level (Berg & Stone, 1980), positive attitudes toward the target skill (Hirsch & Stone, 1982), and pretraining expectations for nondirective versus directive therapy style (Quartaro & Rennie, 1983). Unfortunately, no firm conclusions can be drawn about which trainee characteristics influence training outcome because these studies involved different trainee and target variables, and none of their findings have been replicated.…”

“…This "teaching to the test" may have artificially accentuated training effects when compared with no-training and may have confused training with the simple "cue-ing" of participants to produce predefined "correct" responses (cf. Quartaro & Rennie, 1983;Resnikoff, 1972).…”

Training in experiential therapy.

“…Ivey (1971), on the other hand, proposed the teaching of counseling skills in a brief period (1–2 hr) and suggested that experiential learning is not necessary. Investigators evaluated these claims and compared the efficacy of the two training methods (Matarazzo, 1978; Perry, 1975; Toukmanian & Rennie, 1975; Toukmanian, Capelle, & Rennie, 1978; Quartaro & Rennie, 1983).…”