The use of videotaped role playing in training and evaluating gerontological counseling and outreach skills.

Abstract

Videotape role playing was used as a training and evaluation technique in a program designed to train professionals, paraprofessionals, and volunteers providing gerontological services. The Mental Health Outreach Program, (MHOP), a training course initiated at the University of Notre Dame, varied in length from 3-5 months and was conducted 3 times in South Bend, Indiana, and 5 times at various sites in New Mexico. The program employed situations in which trainees were asked to counsel an elderly client, in a role play setting where the older individual was portrayed by a trained "actor." This exercise was one of several training procedures. Other training procedures included classroom training, group discussions, and fieldwork supervision. This paper reports the results from MHOP training sessions conducted in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1982, following a review of role playing in training. 2 evaluators with graduate training in gerontological counseling scored the videotaped records of the role playing sessions and rated the performance of 39 trainees and 15 control subjects on each of 13 dimensions. Each subject's performance was scored on a 1-7 point scale for each dimension; 7 represented an ideal performance and a 1 indicated an inept performance. The results suggest that the role playing experience was an important component of training. Both the expert rater's judgements of the trainees' skills on the 13 dimensions and the trainees' self-assessment of their skills on the same dimensions indicated improvement by the end of training. Mean overall scores for pretest and posttest performance were 4.7 and 5.3 for the self ratings and 4.9 and 5.2 for the expert ratings. Based upon expert's ratings, trainees improved on all 13 dimensions; 4 of these dimensions -- nondefensiveness, flexibility, ability to deal with unpleasant feelings, and noncondescension -- showed significant improvement and 3 dimensions -- diagnosis and probing, empathy, and listening -- approached significance. In a followup survey of the trainees' reactions to the entire training program, 82% of whose who had participated in the role playing exercises indicated they were extremely or moderately useful. To assess the role playing technique as a training evaluation procedure, scores from the 13 role play dimensions were analyzed using a multiple analysis of variance procedure. Trainees failed to show significantly greater improvement than controls from pretest to posttest role playing sessions, but trainees showed more overall improvement than comparison subjects.