Increase in counselling communication skills after basic and advanced microskills training

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Counselling Psychology
• Psychological Training

Background:

• Mastering counselling communication skills is essential for registered European psychologists.
• The microcounseling method is a proven effective training approach for these skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of separate counselling communication skills after basic and advanced microcounseling training.
• To address the limitation of previous research reporting only overall effect sizes.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a counselling communication skills progress test (CSPT) with 583 psychology students.
• Employed a mixed-methods design including between-subject, within-subject, and pre-test-post-test-control group designs.
• Compared skill acquisition across freshmen (no training), first-year (basic skills), and second-year (advanced skills) students.

Main Results:

• Seven basic skills and four advanced skills demonstrated large effect sizes.
• One advanced skill showed a moderate effect size, indicating varying levels of training efficacy.
• Students trained in basic skills performed significantly better than those trained in advanced skills.

Conclusions:

• The microcounseling method is highly effective for teaching individual microskills.
• Further targeted training is necessary to enhance student proficiency in advanced counselling communication skills.
• The study highlights the differential effectiveness of microcounseling for basic versus advanced skills.