Factors influencing the effectiveness of communication skills training: programme contents outweigh teachers' skills

Although more and more time and money are being spent on communication skills training, little is known about which factors influence the effectiveness of these programmes. The present study was conducted to shed some light on this issue. Students' perceptions of the learning effect of an extensive communication skills training programme are assessed using a questionnaire, administered to two consecutive classes. Using learning effect reported by the students as dependent variable, contributions of various aspects of the programme to the learning effect were analysed.The results show that more than half of the variance in the learning effect was explained by the content of the programme, with only 5% of the remaining variance being explained by the didactic skills of the teachers.