Family counseling intervention for pre-service speech-language pathologists

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a short-duration, pre-service training program on the counseling knowledge of speech-language pathology (SLP) students and their motivation to counsel. Fifty students in a Communication Sciences and Disorders department participated in this study: thirty undergraduate and twenty graduate students. The participants were randomized into two groups, an intervention group and a control group. Each participant completed a pre-and post-test to measure (a) emotion identification, (b) emotion approach, and (c) jargon free responses to pre-recorded counseling situations. All participants completed an emotional intelligence scale, a motivation scale, and identified previous counseling experience. The intervention group completed a two-session (two hours each) counseling training and the control group received no intervention. Analysis of variance demonstrated that participants who completed four hours of counseling training significantly increased their emotion identification and emotion approach behaviors. There was not a significant difference between groups for jargon free responses due to near ceiling results on the pre-test across both groups. Thus, pre-service SLP students who explicitly learn counseling material will increase in knowledge and motivation to use emotion approach responses in clinical scenarios.