A Measure for Evaluating Basic Psychological Interviewing Skills

Abstract

Traditionally, graduate programs in psychology have relied upon applied practicum experiences and supervisor evaluations to establish a student’s clinical competence. However, guidelines established by the American Psychological Association (APA) Standards of Accreditation (SoA) for Health Service Psychology require that programs accredited by the APA assess every graduate student in vivo or via recording each time an evaluation is conducted (usually each grading period). There are currently no published, standardized measures in applied psychology to gather most of these data in a reliable and valid fashion.

The purpose of the current study was to develop and to take steps toward standardization of an empirically validated measure for use within graduate training in psychology. The Skills in Psychological Interviewing: Clinical Evaluation Scales (SPICES) was developed in response to the need for standardized methods of evaluating psychology students’ skills across the nine profession-wide competency areas, as identified by the SoA. Evaluation of the SPICES measure provided empirical support for its reliability, validity, and usefulness in graduate training, lending support for use of the measure as one method to evaluate student performance across the APA Competency Benchmarks in Professional Psychology. Importantly, the measure is congruent with the SoA’s profession-wide competency areas and provides programs with a framework for helping to evaluate each student’s readiness for practicum at various levels as well as internship.