106+ Free Befähigungsprüfung Lebens- und Sozialberatung Practice Questions

A Lebens- und Sozialberater is a licensed professional in Austria under § 94 Z 46 and § 119 of the Trade Code (Gewerbeordnung 1994 – GewO). Counselors provide professional guidance, support, and coaching to healthy individuals, couples, families, and teams facing life transitions, relationship challenges, decision-making dilemmas, work stress, or acute situational crises. The profession operates under the Fachverband Personenberatung und Personenbetreuung of the Austrian Economic Chamber (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich – WKO).

Under Austrian law, the distinction is clear and legally binding: Psychotherapy (§ 1 Psychotherapiegesetz – PthG) is a healthcare profession dedicated to diagnosing and treating psychological illness, mental disorders, and psychosomatic clinical conditions (krankheitswertige Störungen). Lebens- und Sozialberatung (§ 119 GewO 1994) is a non-medical counseling profession aimed at healthy individuals dealing with developmental challenges, situational conflicts, and life dilemmas; counselors are strictly prohibited from diagnosing or treating mental pathology and must immediately refer clients requiring medical or psychotherapeutic care.

Two different requirements are easy to conflate. Admission to the exam itself is open to anyone who is eigenberechtigt, meaning aged 18 or over; no prior training is required to sit it. The trade licence is a separate matter: the Lebens- und Sozialberatungs-Verordnung (BGBl. II Nr. 116/2022) sets out a closed list of qualification routes, one of which combines an accredited 6-semester Lehrgang of at least 4,500 Zeitstunden (180 ECTS) covering theory, self-experience and supervised practice with a successfully passed Befähigungsprüfung. Several other listed routes — including shortened upgrade paths for graduates in psychology or social work and holders of the psychotherapeutic Propädeutikum — do not involve the Befähigungsprüfung at all. Counselors already holding an unrestricted trade licence with three years of self-employment can sit the exam with Module 1 credited, in order to use the state-certified quality seal.

The examination has two separately assessed modules at Level 6 of the Austrian National Qualifications Framework, and candidates choose the order in which they sit them. Module 1 is a written examination with a single subject, 'Psychosoziale Beratungs- und Fachkompetenz'; the tasks are designed to be completed in five hours and the exam is ended after six. Module 2 is oral, taken before the full commission, and has two subjects of 30 to 45 minutes each: a Fachgespräch on a pre-submitted exposé of 8 to 10 A4 pages, presented in up to 10 minutes, and a Fallvignette applying psychosocial counseling to a realistic case. Candidates who evidence three years of unrestricted self-employment in the trade have Module 1 credited and sit Module 2 only.

Under the Meister- und Befähigungsprüfungs-Finanzierungsgesetz, effective 1 January 2024, the first and second attempt at each module are fully federally funded, so candidates pay €0 and the Meisterprüfungsstelle issues no fee notice for them. A statutory fee applies only from the third attempt onwards. That fee is set by the Allgemeine Prüfungsordnung (BGBl. II Nr. 110/2004) as a percentage of a federal civil-service salary, so the euro amount is indexed rather than fixed; WKO and Fachgruppe publications around 2023-2024 quoted roughly €154 for Module 1 and €502 for Module 2, about €653 in total. Confirm the current figure with the Meisterprüfungsstelle of your Bundesland. Preparation workshops offered by the Fachgruppen are separate and priced individually.

Under § 119 Abs. 4 GewO 1994, counselors and their employees are bound to secrecy about all matters entrusted to them, and the duty continues after the counseling relationship ends. The only exception written into that provision is an express release by the client. Disclosure beyond that has to be justified outside § 119 — in practice through the doctrine of justifying necessity (rechtfertigender Notstand), which Austrian law develops as an unwritten ground alongside the excusing necessity codified in § 10 StGB, and which requires an acute, imminent danger to a clearly higher interest such as life. Separately, § 95 Abs. 1a AußStrG requires parents to evidence that they have been counseled on the specific needs of their minor children before submitting a settlement in a consensual divorce, and Lebens- und Sozialberater are among the professionals who provide that counseling.

The official examination is conducted in German through written work tasks and an oral commission examination, and it publishes no item count. This bank is an English-language multiple-choice study adaptation: it is not an official translation, it does not simulate the exam format, and it cannot stand in for the oral practice the Fachgespräch and Fallvignette demand. What it does do is build the knowledge and judgement those components rest on — counseling methods and their indications, Austrian statutes such as § 119 GewO, § 1 PthG and § 95 AußStrG, the Standes- und Ausübungsregeln, professional boundaries, crisis assessment and referral, documentation and data protection, and practice-management calculations — with the authentic German legal and technical terms retained throughout. The bank's own topic weightings are an editorial distribution across the official qualification standard, which itself publishes no percentage weights.