Increase in counselling communication skills after basic and advanced microskills training Jeroen Kuntze*, Henk T. van der Molen and Marise P. Born Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Background. Mastering counselling communication skills is one of the requirements that lead to the diploma of a registered European psychologist. The microcounseling method proves to be effective in training these skills. Aim. Research into the effectiveness of the microcounseling method often reports overall effect sizes only. The aim of this study was to investigate the adequate use of separate counselling communication skills (seven basic skills: minimal encouragements; asking questions; paraphrasing; reflection of feeling; concreteness; summarizing; and situation clarification and five advanced skills: advanced accurate empathy; confrontation; positive relabelling; examples of one’s own; and directness) after respectively a basic and an advanced training in these skills. Sample. Participants were 583 first year or second year bachelor students in psychology who took the counselling communication skills progress test (CSPT). The participants are divided in a group of freshmen, who had not received any training in counselling communication skills; first year students, who had received a training in basic skills; second year students who had followed a training in advanced skills and a control group. Method. A between-subject design, a within-subject design and a pre-test–post-test- control group design were used to examine the scores on these skills. Results. Seven basic skills and four advanced skills had large effect sizes. One advanced skill had a moderate effect size. Conclusion. The microcounseling method is very effective on the level of separate microskills. However, students perform better on the basic skills than on the advanced skills. More training seems to be needed in the latter to achieve the same level of mastery. Counselling communication skills training programmes are considered to be important in psychology curricula. In 2006 the European Federation of Psychology Associations (EFPA) emphasized oral communication skills training as one of the requirements for psychology curricula that lead to the diploma of a registered European psychologist (European Federation of Psychology Associations [EFPA], 2006). The microcounseling * Correspondence should be addressed to MSc Jeroen Kuntze, Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 3000 DR, The Netherlands (e-mail: Kuntze@fsw.eur.nl). The British Psychological Society 175 British Journal of Educational Psychology (2009), 79, 175–188 q 2009 The British Psychological Society www.bpsjournals.co.uk DOI:10.1348/000709908X313758