Abstract
This study examined extended influences of peer helping courses on graduates’ self-reported experiences of interpersonal relationships, communication skills, and ongoing engagement with the training. The 109 participants included 49 college graduates who completed a peer counseling theory course, 47 graduated psychology concentrators who took a peer practicum that included both theory and supervised practice, and a comparison group of 13 graduated psychology concentrators who took neither peer counseling course. Participants in both peer training courses reported continuing effects on their interpersonal relationships, communication skills, and engagement with the training, with greatest effects reported by the psychology concentrators in both peer training courses. The small comparison group provided additional perspective on these findings. Suggestions for future research are offered, including potential benefits of more widespread utilization of college peer counselor training and the need for further follow-up studies on those who have been trained as peer counselors.
Keywords
Peer counselor training programs are increasingly viewed as useful components of academic and social university life. There is ample evidence in the literature that peer support is a successful and cost-effective form of prevention, as peers may uniquely understand one another (Brack, Millard, & Shah, 2008). Peer education and peer counseling have found a home in college academic and student services to address many issues, including violence prevention (Newton & Ender, 2010) and alcohol abuse (Badura, Millard, Peluso, & Ortman, 2000; Heiney, 1977; Mastroleo, Mallett, Ray, & Turrisi, 2008; Seegmiller, 2003; Titley & Titley, 1982).
The National Association of Peer Program Professionals (NAPPP, 2010, p. 7) has established standards for peer programs that include a mandate to “[enhance] the personal growth and positive development of peer helpers and helpees alike.” Some research indicates that college students trained as peer educators show improvement in the areas of interpersonal communication, self-esteem, and personal health behaviors (Aladag & Tezer, 2009; Newton & Ender, 2010), though these studies did not provide follow-up data. The present study of college postgraduates examined self-reported effects of two peer training modalities, one more theory-oriented and the other more practice-based.
The Current Study
This study examined college graduates’ reports of the effects of two different kinds of peer counselor training on their career plans, interpersonal interactions, and work relationships. One approach was a peer training theory course that included role-play practice but no work with clients (theory course); the other was a psychology peer advising practicum that included similar theory instruction but also supervised practice with clients (practicum course). Comparisons were also made with a small group of psychology graduates who took neither peer course.
We expected that graduates would report continuing positive effects of the peer counseling courses on their current interactions with important people in their lives and on their experience and relationships at work. We examined the possible differential effects of the two types of peer training in these areas. Because there was more interpersonal interaction within the practicum course than the theory course, we expected graduates to report feeling more connected in class, more interaction with the instructor, and more lasting ties among class members. The small comparison group evaluated similar effects of a memorable psychology course they had taken.
Method
Participants
A sample of 461 graduates who had taken psychology courses at a large Midwestern university over a 5-year period were mailed informed consents and questionnaires identified by code numbers to assure confidentiality. All students in the practicum group (124) were sent questionnaires; 18 were returned as undeliverable and 47 sent back materials for a response rate of 44%. All students in the theory class over the same period (260) were sent questionnaires; 36 were returned as undeliverable and 49 sent back materials for a response rate of 22%. Seventy-seven comparison group graduates were sent questionnaires with 25 undeliverable and 13 sent back materials for a response rate of 25%. The resulting sample of 109 participants (91 women, 17 men, and one undisclosed), self-reported as European American (73.4%), Asian American (5.5%), African American (4.6%), Latino/a (2.8%), international (1.8%), and “other” (11.9%). The mean age was 23.85 (SD = 1.56) years. On the Davis interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) Empathy Scale, the Practicum group scored 29.04 (SD = 3.53), Theory group scored 28.37 (SD = 3.61), and Comparison group scored 28.85 (3.89). No statistically significant differences were found among the three groups on gender, race–ethnicity, or the Davis IRI Empathy Scale. The Theory group was approximately one-year older at the time of the survey than the practicum group, χ 2 (2) = 10.43, p < .01.
Academic peer advising practicum
The practicum course (detailed in Hatcher & Fodor, 1995) combined peer counselor training with academic advising. Prospective peer counselors were screened for suitability and less than 1% was found not well matched to the course. Students received weekly supervision, including a 2-hr class taught by a licensed clinical psychology faculty. Peer counselors worked 2 hours weekly, seeing one to three counselees per week in half-hour sessions, where personal as well as academic advising issues regularly arose. Advisee response was consistently positive, with 99.4% reporting that their advisor listened to their needs “very well” (Hatcher & Fodor, 1995).
The peer theory course
A comprehensive discussion of the theory course can be found in Hatcher, Walsh, Reynolds, and Sullivan (1995). The course integrated counseling and communication skills training techniques (D’Andrea & Salovey, 1996). The course, available to any undergraduate student, was staffed by a clinical psychologist faculty member, a graduate student, and six-to-eight undergraduate peer teaching assistants who had successfully completed the class, following a pilot offering of the course.
Measures
Participants were asked to provide demographic information, including gender, age, year of graduation, major in college, highest degree received, and race–ethnicity. Survey items consisted of structured questions, with Likert-type item response options of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. Five survey items asked participants to think back on their experiences in the theory or practicum courses specifically (or for the comparison group, in any memorable psychology course) and respond to the statements in terms of how the course did or did not affect their relationships and communication with others, including current interactions with family, friends, and communication at work. Items were developed to assess the effect of peer counselor training on the development of career choices and goals. Two items asked about the differential effect of the particular course on the graduate’s career goals and choices as compared to other courses in college.
Finally, the perspective taking and empathic concern items, based on two subscales of the IRI (Davis, 1980, 1983), were administered to measure adult forms of empathy. Davis (1980) found adequate reliability for the two subscales (perspective taking α = .73 and empathic concern α = .71).
Results
To reduce the complexity of the analyses, survey items were factor analyzed using principal axis factoring with direct oblimin rotation. Three factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 accounted for 59% of the variance. The first factor, labeled “effect on interpersonal interaction,” had pattern matrix loadings averaging .72 (.58 to .87) and comprised 5 items dealing with the courses’ effect on interactions with family, friends, partners, and coworkers and at work or school, and one item reporting use in the participants’ careers of skills learned in the course. Cronbach’s α was .88 for the scale based on this factor. The second factor, labeled “goals and engagement,” had loadings averaging .66 (.51 to .89), α of .86, and consisted of 3 items indicating that the course affected career goals and 3 items dealing with engagement with the course and fellow students. The third factor, labeled “communication skills,” composed of 2 items with loadings of .89 and .81, dealt with to what extent the course taught communication skills; α was .89 for this 2-item scale.
Table 1 lists the mean ratings for the three class groups on the three factor-based scales, where 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 = disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree. Participants in the peer practicum and theory courses report positive effects of their course experiences on all three factor scales, except that participants in the theory course did not report effects on their career goals and engagement, as compared to another memorable college course. Looking more closely at the goals and engagement factor, a secondary factor analysis of these items suggested consideration of two subfactors, comprised of items related to engagement (α = .80) and career goals (α = .82), respectively. Scales based on these items correlate .60. Examining the theory group on these two subfactors, we found that the 16 nonpsychology concentrators who had been enrolled in the theory class reported lower levels of engagement (2.52) with the students and instructor than the 33 concentrators (3.31) in this group, t(48) = 3.03, p = .004, d = .87. The concentrators’ level of engagement is significantly greater than “neutral,” t(48) = 2.12, p < .05, d = .61, whereas the reported effect on goals is not. Further, the comparison group means were all close to or below 3.0, indicating no difference from their chosen reference course on any of these factors.
Positive Effects of Peer Counselor Training.
Note. Practicum = peer counseling practicum course; Theory = peer counseling theory course; Comparison = comparison group.
ap M > 3: probability that mean rating is greater than 3 = “neutral.”
The reported effects on these three factors were compared between the two peer course groups using t-tests. Levene’s test for homogeneity of variances was not significant for any of the comparisons. There was no significant difference between practicum and theory course participants regarding effects on interaction, t(93) = 1.79, p = ns. There were significant differences between the practicum and theory groups regarding effects on goals and engagement, t(93) = 6.58, p < .001, d = 1.36, and regarding communication skills taught, t(93) = 2.33, p < .03, d = .48. When the 16 nonpsychology concentrators were removed from the theory course sample (leaving 33 concentrators), the differences remained for career goals, t(77) = 3.63, p = .001, d = .83, and for engagement t(77) = 5.35, p < .001, d = 1.22. However, the difference regarding communication skills taught did not, t(77) = 1.25, p = ns.
t-Tests indicated that graduates of the practicum training course reported significantly greater effects on all three factor scales as compared to the comparison group (all ps < .005). Theory course participants’ ratings differed from the comparison group on the interactions and skills taught scales (ps < .005) but not on the goals and engagement scale.
Discussion
This study is among the first to show continuing effects of college peer counseling courses on counselor trainees. Graduates looking back on their experience in these courses reported positive influence on their personal and work relationships.
The practicum course, with its more intensive interaction and the opportunity for supervised, hands-on peer counseling work, promoted more connectedness among classmates and faculty; those students reported staying in touch at a higher level than those in the theory course. The practicum course also helped clarify career goals at a greater level than the theory course. These effects remained even when nonconcentrators in the theory course were excluded from the analyses. However, both courses seem to have provided important interpersonal skills to their participants, with effects recognized several years postgraduation.
Limitations of this Study
This study relied upon a volunteer sample whose choice to participate may have been influenced by the positive effects of the course that we anticipated. In addition, as a retrospective self-report study, we cannot rule out the possibility of halo effects due to the generally good interpersonal experiences that graduates reported having had during their courses. Nor can we rule out the possibility that students who were more interested in and open to interpersonal influence preferentially chose peer helping courses, thus reporting more effects from it. Preenrollment assessments would be needed to address this possibility. The small size of the comparison group inevitably made the few analyses that sought to demonstrate equivalence between the groups underpowered. The Davis IRI scores, however, are so close that we believe they show the groups to be comparable in their empathic and perspective-taking abilities.
Suggestions for Future Research
Relatively little research has been conducted on college peer counselor training. Longitudinal research would be useful to further assess its effects on the careers and personal lives of postgraduates. Assuming peer counselor training has the potential to offer the variety of protective factors that so importantly figure in the literature on resiliency and mental health (Perkins & Borden, 2003), it’s becoming a more frequent element of a college curriculum is surely worthy of consideration. Future studies would benefit from prepost assessments of the interests, career goals, and interpersonal skills of counselors in training and from data regarding the actual career choices of the participants, which were not available for the current study.
Although each respondent’s experience differs to some degree, clear patterns emerged that may assist in developing future educational, service-learning program designs at the college level, and beyond.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
We thank James Kulik and Rae Newton for initial assistance with data analysis, Patricia Gurin for her program support, Al Cain for his helpful editorial feedback, and Dr. Robert Hatcher, who contributed editorial recommendations and assistance with statistical analysis.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We thank the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan for an initial grant to conduct this research.