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arXiv · 2601.08892

Evaluating Role-Consistency in LLMs for Counselor Training

Eric Rudolph·Natalie Engert·Jens Albrecht
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Abstract

The rise of online counseling services has highlighted the need for effective training methods for future counselors. This paper extends research on VirCo, a Virtual Client for Online Counseling, designed to complement traditional role-playing methods in academic training by simulating realistic client interactions. Building on previous work, we introduce a new dataset incorporating adversarial attacks to test the ability of large language models (LLMs) to maintain their assigned roles (role-consistency). The study focuses on evaluating the role consistency and coherence of the Vicuna model's responses, comparing these findings with earlier research. Additionally, we assess and compare various open-source LLMs for their performance in sustaining role consistency during virtual client interactions. Our contributions include creating an adversarial dataset, evaluating conversation coherence and persona consistency, and providing a comparative analysis of different LLMs.

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Eric Rudolph, Natalie Engert, Jens Albrecht. 2026-01-13. Evaluating Role-Consistency in LLMs for Counselor Training. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08892

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