A follow-up of undergraduate students five years after helping skills training.

Abstract

In a 5-year follow-up assessment, 33 students who had taken an undergraduate helping skills course indicated that they had continued to use the helping skills in both their professional lives and personal relationships. On average, there were no significant changes from pretraining to follow-up on empathy, natural helping ability, or facilitative interpersonal skills. Furthermore, although students had increased in self-efficacy for using the skills during training, on average they maintained their self-efficacy levels at the follow-up. The 15 participants who had further mental health education, however, scored higher at follow-up on empathy, natural helping ability, self-efficacy for using the skills, and facilitative interpersonal skills compared with the 18 participants who had no further mental health education (controlling for pretraining levels), suggesting that continued exposure to and practice using the skills helped them continue to improve their helping abilities. Qualitative data indicated that participants typically had positive experiences in the helping skills course. Implications for training and research are provided. Public Significance StatementParticipants reported that they used the helping skills in both their professional and personal lives 5 years after training, suggesting that the effects of helping skills training extend over time. Furthermore, those who pursued further mental health education continued to improve in their helping abilities more than did those who did not continue further mental health education.

Helping skills training: Outcomes and trainer effects.

“…The most frequently used indicator of outcome for Hill’s helping skills model is increases in self-efficacy, or beliefs about an individual’s counseling skills (e.g., Hill et al, 2008, 2016, 2020; Lent et al, 2003), which is an important factor given that it has been associated with less anxiety and stress (Daniels & Larson, 2001; Lent et al, 2003) and counseling outcome expectations (Lent et al, 2003). Thus, it seems important to determine whether trainers have effects on helping students gain self-efficacy in their counseling skills.…”

Helping skills courses: The effects of student diversity and numeric marginalization on counseling self-efficacy, counseling self-stigma, and mental health.

“…Although mental health has not formally been assessed as an outcome of helping skills training, students have anecdotally reported that they gained a lot personally from such training because they not only had the opportunity to learn to be a helper but they also served as volunteer clients and talked about personal problems. Given that helping skills training has been linked with greater ethnocultural empathy (Lu et al, 2020) and personal relationships (Hill et al, 2020), students may be able to understand other perspectives and create stronger interpersonal relationships. On the one hand, diversity might be related to better mental health because students have the opportunity to share and hear various stories and perspectives.…”

“…The most typical outcome for helping skills training is increased counseling self-efficacy (Knox & Hill, in press), even after 5 years of completing an undergraduate helping skills course (Hill et al, 2020). However, less is known about whether the effects hold for all racial/ethnic groups and specifically whether diversity and numeric marginalization predict changes in counseling self-efficacy.…”

Understanding Students’ Positive Emotions Through Photovoice Study

“…Various studies on undergraduate students and their learning activities have been carried out. The methods that researchers have recently used to study undergraduate students were qualitative (Hill, et al, 2020;Villa, et al, 2020) and quantitative methods (Pham & Lui, 2020), for example regulatory emotions (Hannan & Orcutt., 2020). These variables include, the use of coping strategies, emotions, support, locus of control, mindfulness, and empathy (Killian, 2008;Thomas & Otis., 2010).…”