OnCoCo 1.0: A Public Dataset for Fine-Grained Message Classification in Online Counseling Conversations

Jens Albrecht, Robert Lehmann, Aleksandra Poltermann, Eric Rudolph, Philipp Steigerwald, Mara Stieler


Abstract
This paper presents OnCoCo 1.0, a new public dataset for fine-grained message classification in online counseling. It is based on a new, integrative system of categories, designed to improve the automated analysis of psychosocial online counseling conversations. Existing category systems, predominantly based on Motivational Interviewing (MI), are limited by their narrow focus and dependence on datasets derived mainly from face-to-face counseling. This limits the detailed examination of textual counseling conversations. In response, we developed a comprehensive new coding scheme that differentiates between 38 types of counselor and 28 types of client utterances, and created a labeled dataset consisting of about 2.800 messages from counseling conversations. We fine-tuned several models on our dataset to demonstrate its applicability. The data and models are publicly available to researchers and practitioners. Thus, our work contributes a new type of fine-grained conversational resource to the language resources community, extending existing datasets for social and mental-health dialogue analysis.
Anthology ID:
2026.socon-1.9
Volume:
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Social Context (SoCon) and the 2nd Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ LREC 2026
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Marco Antonio Stranisci, Neele Falk, Sofie Labat, Soda Marem Lo, Aswathy Velutharambath, Sabine Weber, Rossana Damiano, Simona Frenda, Veronique Hoste, Bennett Kleinberg, Roman Klinger, Viviana Patti, Flor Miriam Plaza-del-Arco, Maarten Sap, Seid Muhie Yimam
Venues:
SoCon | NLPSI | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
85–94
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-soconnlpsi-09
DOI:
10.63317/3fv7ej9tcxf9
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Jens Albrecht, Robert Lehmann, Aleksandra Poltermann, Eric Rudolph, Philipp Steigerwald, and Mara Stieler. 2026. OnCoCo 1.0: A Public Dataset for Fine-Grained Message Classification in Online Counseling Conversations. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Social Context (SoCon) and the 2nd Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ LREC 2026, pages 85–94, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
OnCoCo 1.0: A Public Dataset for Fine-Grained Message Classification in Online Counseling Conversations (Albrecht et al., SoCon-NLPSI 2026)
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