Empathy in Professionals and Trained Lay Counsellors : a Comparison*

The study was conducted on a group of 12 lay counsellors and 12 professionals in order to compare the empathy of the two groups. The lay counsellors underwent six months, biweekly training and the professionals were senior students belonging to mental health professions. A 15 minutes simulated interview with an acting client was recorded and three 2 minute segments were coded, randomnized and rated. The 72 segments were rated by one rater, trained sufficiently in rating using the Accurate Empathy scale. The inter rater reliability for 30 segments was found to be .36 (significant at 0.05 level). The results showed that the empathy of the professionals group (mean score 6.7) was superior to lay counsellors group (mean score 5) which was statistically significant at 0.02 level.