Facilitation skills and the perception of clients' wants

High functioning and low functioning observers as measured by the Carkhuff global level of facilitation scale were compared on their ability to perceive client wants. Observers were 16 master's level psychologists who had previously received 40 hours of Carkhuffian human relations training. After each counseling session the client and observer filled out the Therapy Session Reports describing what the client talked about (dialogue) and what the client wanted (wants). An agreement score between observer and clients was calculated for each observer. It was found that all observers were better able to identify dialogue. High facilitators were better able to identify wants than low facilitators (experimental task), while there was no difference between the groups in ability to identify dialogue (control task).