Preventing empathic distress and social stressors at work through nonviolent communication training: A field study with health professionals.
Journal of occupational health psychology, 2018, 23(1), 141.
Wacker, R., & Dziobek, I.
https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000058
Full article: link
Abstract: A group of healthcare professionals underwent a three-day NVC training course. Their communication skills, level of empathy, empathic distress and social stress at work were assessed before and after the training. The results showed that the NVC training helped the healthcare professionals to better express their emotions and to use NVC more effectively in their work. In addition, the training helped to reduce their empathic distress and prevent an increase in social stress at work.
Comment: The use of a control group is essential for measuring changes and determining whether they are really due to the NVC training or to any type of training or gathering. However, in this case, the control group (N=27) had no activity at all during those of the experimental group (N=29). It is therefore impossible to state that the differences in scores between the two groups are due to the NVC content of the training. In fact, these differences may simply be due to the fact that the 3 days of group activities were different from the usual work environment.
Furthermore, as the tests were explicit (tests on NVC, cognitive and emotional empathy, empathic distress and social stress at work) and the training issues fairly obvious, it seemed easy for the experimental group to fall into confirmation bias, by responding in such a way as to increase the scores for each test.
Furthermore, as the authors point out, since participation in the training was voluntary, the two groups were not balanced in terms of level of education, with an average of 3 years more education for the group that took the NVC training.
Perspective: This study suggests that careful attention should be paid to the use of a control group and to the use of implicit rather than explicit tests to evaluate the effects of NVC training.