Effects of a nonviolent communication‐based training program for inpatient alcoholics in South Korea.
Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 57(3), 2021
Yang, J., & Kim, S.
DOI : 10.1111/ppc.12673
Full article : link
Abstract: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a communication training programme based on the principles of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) for hospitalised alcoholics. The objectives were to design a NVC-based training programme focused on alcohol relapse prevention and administer the programme to inpatient alcoholics, and to examine the effects of the NVC-based training programme on empathy, anger expression, communication skills, and alcohol abstinence self-efficacy in inpatient alcoholics. They obtained 47 patients divided between the experimental group and the control group.
Comment: Although there was a control group in this study, the participants in the control group did nothing equivalent to the 8 NVC training sessions. Therefore, even if the authors find differences between the two groups after the training sessions, it is not possible to conclude whether this is the effect of the training content, i.e. NVC, or just the fact of being part of a group during training. To better distinguish these effects, the control group could have followed a more traditional communication training course, for example.
By studying changes in empathy, anger expression, communication competence and alcohol abstinence self-efficacy in each group, the authors multiply their chances of finding a difference, to counterbalance this multiple-test bias there are statistical corrections such as the Bonferroni correction.
As the authors point out, recruiting patients on a voluntary basis creates a selection bias. Indeed, of the 110 patients who were asked to join the experiment, less than half accepted. These subjects are therefore only representative of a proportion of patients, and the results are difficult to generalise.
Perspective: As the authors point out, it would be relevant to evaluate the effects of this training over 6 months, for example, in order to measure the impact over the longer term.