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Training novice psychotherapists: Comparing undergraduate and graduate students' outcomes
Author(s) -
PascualLeone Antonio,
Andreescu Cristina A.,
Yeryomenko Nikita
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
counselling and psychotherapy research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.38
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1746-1405
pISSN - 1473-3145
DOI - 10.1080/14733145.2014.897360
Subject(s) - psychology , graduate students , medical education , training (meteorology) , mathematics education , pedagogy , medicine , physics , meteorology
Aim This paper describes and contrasts the impact of two 13‐week counsellor training programmes in integrative‐experiential psychotherapy; one with 24 undergraduate psychology students presented in this paper, and the other with archival data from Pascual‐Leone and Andreescu's study of 22 clinical psychology graduate students. Method The programmes taught psychotherapy to trainees who conducted single sessions with eight volunteers. Outcomes of these sessions were measured at four time points using both trainee and client reports. Findings Undergraduate trainees significantly improved in fostering a therapeutic alliance, helping skills, and in their confidence (partial eta Sq. = .628). Most of this effect seemed to occur in the first nine weeks. When baseline scores were compared across the two training groups, undergraduate trainees were not performing as well as graduate trainees at fostering alliance and helping skills and this difference held throughout training ( p 's < .007). Implications Despite differences, training was effective for both groups and undergraduates did seem to be closing the gap. Implications for further research and clinical practice are discussed.