Caller Type Research Articles

Evaluation of crisis intervention services with anonymous clients.

A technique is introduced for using intake data to evaluate crisis intervention services in which client anonymity prevents the usual follow-up procedures. The technique is based on the assumptions (a) that the rate of reuse of the service indicates the effectiveness of the service, and (b) that counselors' estimates of their effectiveness provide some indication of the adequacy of their training. The study was conducted at a 24-hour metropolitan hotline. In addition to obtaining the usual intake information, counselors asked callers how often they had used the hotline previously and then rated their own effectiveness in aiding the callers. Analyses show the relative effectiveness of the hotline with various types of callers and problems and suggest areas where additional counselor training is desirable.

Chronic callers to a suicide prevention center.

Individuals who catted a suicide prevention center a large number of times (chronic callers) were found to be very similar in general characteistics to the general population of callers. They were just as likely to be suicidal risks as the average caller. Several types of chronic callers are described and possible approaches are outlined for dealing with those who reject therapeutic counsel and who appear to need merely to ventilate their emotions.

Analysis of Mixtures of Wide- and Narrow-Band Traffic

The traffic aspects of two communications systems are considered. The first case uses a single wide-band facility to simultaneously carry traffic of different bandwidths (for example, a super group to carry single trunk calls and calls requiring a channel group). Both types of callers have full access to the facility, but in order to equalize their grades-of-service the wide-band traffic may be given the advantage of queuing when it cannot gain access. The economy which results from this combined operation must be balanced with the cost of the queuing facility. The second case, facility or group switching, employs the switching of trunk groups to meet individual traffic requests. In this model there are two types of single trunk callers, one which is served on available single trunks and another whose requests are met by establishing temporary exclusive groups to meet subsequent demands of this second type of caller. The blocking probabilities, operating efficiencies, and traffic consequences are discussed, with the conclusion that facility switching must yield switching savings greater than the increased trunk costs (more trunks to meet operational inefficiencies) in order to produce net savings in a system to provide an equivalent grade-of-service. Of particular importance in both cases is the oscillatory form of the blocking probability curves, a characteristic that is endemic to these systems.