Relationship of supervisor and trainee gender to in-session verbal behavior and ratings of trainee skills.

This study of 44 supervision dyads investigated the effects of supervisor and trainee gender on the verbal interactions of participants and on their perceptions of trainee skill levels. Supervisor and trainee utterances were coded as being relationship or task focused. Male supervisors paired with male trainees engaged in more task-oriented discourse than did other dyad configurations. In other analyses, gender did not affect which party exerted more effect on the structure of the interactions. Finally, no significant differences were found in how male and female trainees rated their own skill levels.