The evaluation of participants’ perceptions of session impact : do counsellors-in-training, volunteer clients, and extra-credit/class required clients view session impact differently?/ created by John Beckenbach, Shawn Patrick and Jim Sells

Training programmes frequently recruit students from undergraduate classes to serve as clients for counsellors-in-training. Some of these clients receive external incentives for this participation, such as extra-credit or expectation of fulfilling a course requirement. It is unknown however whether or not this external incentive influences the perception of these sessions for clients and also for the counsellor-in-training. This article describes a study examining the impact of external incentive on client and counsellor-in-training session evaluation ratings. Some differences in perceptions for both counsellors and clients were found between sessions involving extra-credit and those not involving extra-credit. The training and ethical implications related to these findings is discussed.