Helping skills training for undergraduates: Outcomes and prediction of outcomes.

Abstract

The authors examined outcomes and predictors of outcomes for 85 undergraduates in 3 helping skills classes. After training, trainees used more exploration skills in helping sessions with classmates (as assessed by perceptions of helpees and helpers/trainees as well as behavioral counts of skills), were perceived by helpees as more empathic, talked less in sessions, conducted better sessions (from helpee and helper/trainee perspectives), and reported higher self-efficacy for using helping skills. In addition, trainees' confidence increased while learning exploration skills, dropped while learning insight skills, and then increased again while learning action skills. The authors were not able to predict outcome from the variables used (grade-point average, empathic concern and perspective taking, perfectionism). Suggestions for training and future research on training are included.

Training novice psychotherapists: Comparing undergraduate and graduate students' outcomes

“…The outcome of training in each cohort as a whole was successful, but the patterns of change in skills (as rated by both trainees and their clients) differ between the cohorts. This is of particular interest given inconsistencies in the existing literature in addition to an increased demand for training in helping skills at the undergraduate level (Hill & Lent, 2006;Hill et al, 2008). Most importantly, undergraduate students significantly improved their skills in only nine weeks of training (time 3); moreover, during that time they were able to reach the level of graduate students' performance in some areas.…”

“…There is little study of undergraduates in training, which is increasingly becoming a critical and formative first contact with clinical training and one that is growing in demand (Hill et al, 2008). A current review by Hill et al (2008) found only five other studies related to the training of undergraduate students.…”

“…There is little study of undergraduates in training, which is increasingly becoming a critical and formative first contact with clinical training and one that is growing in demand (Hill et al, 2008). A current review by Hill et al (2008) found only five other studies related to the training of undergraduate students. While this slim body of research has indicated that undergraduates improve in the learning and application of helping skills, other research (i.e., Baker & Daniels, 1989) has suggested that the effects of clinical training on undergraduates are different from those of graduate students.…”

“…Notably, there was no control group; Hill et al (2008) have already documented the difficulties in creating a control group due to the lack of comparable university courses, and the ethical problem of randomly assigning student 'counsellors' to a no-training condition. The sample size in this study is also quite small, but it did allow sufficient statistical power to find significant differences between the cohorts.…”

“…This finding should be brought into the larger discussion of the value of ongoing training in therapy. Even so, one must consider the issue that very few studies to date have managed to plot learning curves over multiple time points (Hill et al, 2008, is a notable exception), so irrespective of any ceiling effect, one may not be justified to assume that learning should increase linearly.…”