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Assessment Interview Critiquer Training

How do you know whether your staff are actually using the assessment and active listening skills they’ve learned? How can you prove it to funding and oversight agencies concerned about accountability in evidence-based practices like assessment?

When your staff tape record on-the-job assessment interviews, these can be measured according to baseline criteria
for successful assessment demonstration in two ways. J-SAT maintains a group of carefully trained tape critiquers
who provide normative, graphed, and written feedback allowing for personal, intra-agency, and national comparisons.
Every 20th tape received is completed by each member of the group for on-going quality assurance and inter-rater
reliability testing. Many agencies prefer to have someone outside the agency critique tapes to ensure impartiality in
listening and feedback.

Alternatively, you may contract with J-SAT trainers to train your own staff to critique tapes on a regular basis.

Essential Critiquer Competencies

We have found that people who are most successful at critiquing tapes are graduates of MI and assessment courses
who are able to:
  • Differentiate between nuanced communication dynamics, taking into consideration content, context, and
    intonation;
  • Temporarily suspend overall impressions or feelings about interviews to apply computer-like classifications to
    verbal interactions;
  • Tolerate the ambiguity inherent in the process of classifying communication;
  • Concentrate on several left and right brain functions at once;
  • Write in a clear, detailed, sensitive style that helps interviewers to understand necessary improvements
    and avoids offending or overwhelming interviewers who are sensitive about their performance;
  • Maintain a trainer-level knowledge of Motivational Interviewing (MI) active listening skills and assessment
    skills so that written feedback and coaching adhere to MI and assessment principles;
  • Find areas to reinforce positively and genuinely, even when interviews barely resemble assessment or MI
    standards;
  • Familiarize themselves with Microsoft Excel© spreadsheet programs.
While those who are not strong in all of these areas can learn critiquing, their learning process usually requires much
more extensive practice, including increased coaching time from agency or J-SAT trainers at additional expense.

Workshop Structure

  1. Preparatory Reading

    In advance of the workshop, participants receive the critiquing manual and a license to use J-SAT’s copyrighted critique feedback software. Participants are asked to read the manual carefully in its entirety and familiarize themselves with the software before attending, as the background and detail contained in the manual familiarize participants with the process sufficiently to reduce training time and expense significantly. Pre-tests at the beginning of training serve to encourage this level of familiarization.

  2. Alternating Learning with Practice (3 days of training)

    During the first two days of training, participants learn to code trained interviewers’ active listening (core MI) skills, client change talk heard in taped interviews, and interviewer global interpersonal skills. After each content module, interviewers practice rating skills together from sample assessment interview tapes until they are comfortable with each type of rating required. Participants receive feedback as to how closely their ratings align with the trainer’s.

    On the final day, participants learn how to use the J-SAT critiquer software program to generate graphed feedback reports, including comments that focus on positive reinforcement and assessment skill-building in specific areas and in overall assessment orientation.

  3. Follow-Up Practice for Certification

    At the end of the training, participants receive 3 sample assessment interviews. They will be instructed to complete full critiques on each, one at a time, and email the software output to J-SAT trainers. Trainers will provide phone coaching sessions for each tape until each participant can submit two tapes in a row that fall within acceptable criteria for inter-rater reliability. Participants are free to submit as many interview tapes as needed to meet acceptable standards.

Setting Up a Training

Once you Contact Us to discuss the specifics of the training and set dates, our training coordinator will walk you
through the entire process, making sure that you have all the information you need to provide for a smooth, effective
training experience. The following information may be helpful as you decide how to proceed:

Training Location: Participant / Trainer Ratio:
  • Due to the number of skills rehearsals with individual feedback, J-SAT recommends one facilitator for every
    15 participants.
 
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