Touch it, feel it and experience it: developing professional IS skills using interview-style experiential simulations

The IS education field has made increasing use of computerised experiential simulations, but few attempts have been made to create an authentic learning environment that combines and balances elements of video-based computer simulation with real-life learning activities. This paper explores the design principles used to develop a CD-ROM simulation where learners use interviewing skills to elicit system requirements from simulated employees in an authentic context. The employees are videoed actors who converse with each other and with learners within a dynamic interaction model. The paper also describes how we combined this simulation with other teaching approaches such as in-class discussions, student team work, formal presentations, etc.

Designing, implementing and evaluating a social work practice skills course: a case example

Practice skills, such as communication and interviewing skills, are an integral part of every undergraduate course that aims to provide professional qualification for social workers. While there is substantial literature about the skills required to be a proficient social work practitioner, there is a dearth of literature about how to teach such skills and particularly how students experience such a course. By critically reflecting on the design, implementation and evaluation of a social work practice skills course, this article is offered as a contribution toward filling an identified gap in social work education literature. The course evaluation particularly highlights the importance of face to face interaction between students and teachers to the process of learning.

Police perceptions of interviews involving children with intellectual disabilities: a qualitative inquiry

This study employed a qualitative method to explore the experiences of 20 police officers when interviewing children with intellectual disabilities. Three main themes were interpreted as representing challenges to the officers when interviewing special-needs children: police organizational culture, participants' perceptions of these children as interviewees, and prior information. Participants in this inquiry mentioned poor organizational priority within the police force for child abuse cases and children with intellectual disabilities, as well as inadequate support for interviewing skills development and maintenance. Participants also attempted to equalize these children by interviewing them in the same way as their mainstream peers. Finally, participants viewed interview preparation as influential in determining an interview's successful outcome, but recognized that preparedness could bias their interviewing techniques. Increased attention towards these issues will provide a basis for developing strategies to minimize such challenges and thus improve the quality of interviews with children with intellectual disabilities.

The dual technique model within case study approaches to cross-cultural management research in China

This paper advocates the effectiveness of a dual technique model of interviewing, which combines narrative and depth interview techniques, within the case study method in a cross-cultural management research setting, an Australian MNC operating in China. The case study is acknowledged to be a highly appropriate method for gaining insight into the complicated area of cross-cultural management enquiry in order to generate new theories. In this context, we propose a model which combines the narrative and the depth interview techniques in the interview process, and have illustrated its usefulness with material drawn from the China-Australia cross-cultural research interface.

After establishing the rationale for the model, the discussion focuses on the practicalities of applying it in interviews, in relation to the preparation, warm-up and trust building phases, and in the exercise of personal interviewing skills in cross-cultural research, in this case, the advantage of the interviewer being bilingual.

An investigation of the question-types teachers use to elicit information from children

Background: Teachers are required to report suspected child abuse in many parts of the world, but there is a paucity of research characterising how they question children about wrongdoing. Aims: Because children often speak to multiple people before arriving at a forensic interview it is critical to understand how untrained teachers question children. Sample and Methods: Teachers (n = 47) completed a mock interview, written quiz, and rated their expected performance. Results: In both the interview and quiz, teachers asked few open and many leading questions. Yet, they asked proportionally more open and fewer leading questions on the quiz than during the interview, demonstrating an implicit awareness of good questioning. Holding a higher education level degree was associated with asking fewer questions overall, and fewer leading questions, during the mock interview. Higher perceptions of performance after the mock interview were associated with having asked more open and more specific questions. Conclusions: Overall, teachers asked fewer open questions than desired but also demonstrated some awareness of good interviewing skill. We review the teachers' performance by highlighting the positive aspects of their interviewing skills, identifying areas for improvement, and making suggestions for enhancing teachers' abilities to question children about wrongdoing. Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2014.

The Health Behavior Change Competency Checklist (HBCCC): Instrument development and psychometric evaluation.

More than half of morbidity and mortality in the United States can be attributed to behavior-related disease, such as tobacco use, physical inactivity, poor diet and alcohol consumption. Given the increased prevalence of behaviorally related medical health concerns, physician competence in the implementation of effective behavior change strategies is quickly becoming an essential skill. However, only recently have primary care residency programs begun to systematically teach and evaluate motivational interviewing skills critical to influencing health behavior, and use of standardized, objective assessment tools to assess skillfulness has been largely absent. This paper reports the development of a checklist, the Health Behavior Change Competency Checklist (HBCCC). The instrument captures the theoretical model of behavior change, motivational interviewing, in a practical and versatile manner. Psychometric evaluation demonstrated moderate efficacy. Namely, results indicated the HBCCC possesses good reliability, as evidenced by high internal consistency, and adequate construct validity. It also displayed considerable utility and practical application. While these results provide several reasons for confidence in the HBCCC, item revision and additional testing are required in order to establish it as a meaningful and valuable instrument.

Evaluation of a comprehensive interactive training system for investigative interviewers of children

 Ms Benson's thesis focused on evaluating a new, innovative, interactive online training program for investigative interviewer's of child victims. The results were overwhelmingly positive, showing that online training can be implemented in large organisations, and improve trainees' practical interviewing skills and knowledge.

A guide to interviewing children : essential skills for counsellors, police, lawyers and social workers

This book has been written by two people who really understand children. [They show how to] create opportunities to reduce the trauma of the interview and significantly improve the quality of the information obtained. Chief Constable A.J. Butler Gloucestershire Constabulary A few years ago, a Chief Justice said that it was unnecessary to educate lawyers and judges in the techniques of interviewing children because it was 'just common sense'. The authors show that successful interviewing requires much more than 'common sense'. Freda Briggs, Professor of Child Development, University of South Australia...an excellent book for students and professionals in forensic psychology, policing and social work.Helen Westcott, PhD, The Open UniversityIt is critical that children are interviewed properly in cases of suspected abuse or where the children may be witnesses to or victims of a crime. Poor questioning can upset the child further and contaminate evidence that may be needed in court. Interviewing Children is a practical guide to interviewing techniques for a range of professionals including welfare workers, psychologists, schoolteachers and counsellors, police officers and lawyers. Step by step, it outlines the key stages of an interview, and how to respond to the child's needs during an interview. It explains how to deal with children of different ages and from different backgrounds, and also how to work with their parents. Particular attention is paid to the sensitive issue of sexual abuse, and the problems created by multiple interviews.Clare Wilson lectures in the Department of Psychology at the University of Sydney. Martine Powell lectures in the School of Psychology at Deakin University. Both have trained police officers, social workers and legal professionals in interviewing techniques in Australia and the UK.------------------Full quotes to go on half-title page:This book has been written by two people who really understand children. In passing on their knowledge to professionals who engage with children in the interview room, they create opportunities to reduce the trauma of the interview and significantly improve the quality of the information obtained. Writing in a clear and fresh style, the authors have produced a book which is valuable as a point of reference, a day to day tool and as a training aid to develop skills.Chief Constable A.J. Butler Gloucestershire ConstabularyThis book should be read by all professionals who work with children and could findthemselves receiving disclosures of abuse. It is practical, easy to read and full of examples and hints. It should be a compulsory text for social work studen

The Routledge Guide to Interviewing: Oral History, Social Enquiry & Investigation

The Routledge Guide to Interviewing sets out a well-tested and practical approach and methodology: what works, difficulties and dangers to avoid and key questions which must be answered before you set out. Background methodological issues and arguments are considered and drawn upon but the focus is on what is ethical, legally acceptable and productive:
-Rationale (why, what for, where, how)
-Ethics and Legalities (informed consent, data protection, risks, embargoes)
-Resources (organisational, technical, intellectual)
-Preparation (selecting and approaching interviewees, background and biographical research, establishing credentials, identifying topics)
-Technique (developing expertise and confidence)
-Audio-visual interviews
-Analysis (modes, methods, difficulties)
-Storage (archiving and long-term preservation)
-Sharing Resources (dissemination and development)

From death row to the mansion of a head of state, small kitchens and front parlours, to legislatures and presbyteries, Anna Bryson and Seán McConville’s wide interviewing experience has been condensed into this book. The material set out here has been acquired by trial, error and reflection over a period of more than four decades. The interviewees have ranged from the delightfully straightforward to the painfully difficult to the near impossible – with a sprinkling of those that were impossible.
Successful interviewing draws on the survival skills of everyday life. This guide will help you to adapt, develop and apply these innate skills. Including a range of useful information such as sample waivers, internet resources, useful hints and checklists, it provides sound and plain-speaking support for the oral historian, social scientist and investigator.

Training medical students to conduct motivational interviewing: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the effectiveness of motivational interviewing (MI) training among medical students. METHODS: All students (n=131) (year 5) at Lausanne Medical School, Switzerland were randomized into an experimental or a control group. After a training in basic communication skills (control condition), an 8-h MI training was completed by 84.8% students in the exprimental group. One week later, students in both groups were invited to meet with two standardized patients. MI skills were coded by blinded research assistants using the Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity 3.0. RESULTS: Superior MI performance was shown for trained versus control students, as demonstrated by higher scores for "Empathy" [p<0.001] and "MI Spirit" [p<0.001]. Scores were similar between groups for "Direction", indicating that students in both groups invited the patient to talk about behavior change. Behavior counts assessment demonstrated better performance in MI in trained versus untrained students regarding occurences of MI-adherent behavior [p<0.001], MI non-adherent behavior [p<0.001], Closed questions [p<0.001], Open questions [p=0.001], simple reflections [p=0.03], and Complex reflections [p<0.001]. Occurrences were similar between groups regarding "Giving information". CONCLUSION: An 8-h training workshop was associated with improved MI performance. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: These findings lend support for the implementation of MI training in medical schools.

Interviewer experience, vocal skills and the recruitment of telephone survey respondents

Although telephone interviewing is the main market research method used in Australia, response rates are often low and possibly declining overall. Interviewers are the means by which respondents are recruited and it was hypothesised that their verbal skills and experience would affect response rates. Using data from four market research companies, interviewer experience was shown to be positively related to strike rate (interviews per hour). Apart from having a discernible accent which dampened strike rates and increased refusals, other verbal characteristics had only a weak effect on response rates.

The importance of using open-ended questions when interviewing children

In addition to making reference to best practices, already known, concerning the conduct of interviews with child victims of sexual abuse, the author describes some of the questions of development that must be made and the four benefits of free narrative. Despite the qualities of this type of approach, surveys show that professionals do not get the research, as a rule, free of narrative descriptions by children and that interviews tend to contain the short answer questions, with few breaks and an excessive number of closed questions and trick.According to trainers, experts in this field, there should be greater recognition of the interview as a forensic specialist skills and promote themselves to more effective supervision and monitoring of the forensic interview at work.

Oral language competence, social skills and high-risk boys : what are juvenile offenders trying to tell us?

A cross-sectional study examining the oral language abilities and social skills of male juvenile offenders is described. Fifty juvenile offenders and 50 non-offending controls completed measures of language processing and production, and measures of social skill and IQ. Information about type of offending, substance use histories and learning/literacy problems was also gathered.

Young offenders performed significantly worse on all language and social skill measures, but these differences could not be accounted for on the basis of IQ. Just over half of the young offenders were identified as language impaired. This subgroup was compared with non-language impaired offending peers on a range of variables. The findings have particular implications in the areas of early intervention for high-risk boys and investigative interviewing of juvenile offenders.

The association between investigative interviewers' knowledge of question type and adherence to best-practice interviewing

It is well established that not all investigative interviewers adhere to ‘best-practice’ interview guidelines (i.e., the use of open-ended questions) when interviewing child witnesses about abuse. However, little research has examined the sub skills associated with open question usage. In this article, we examined the association between investigative interviewers' ability to identify various types of questions and adherence to open-ended questions in a standardized mock interview. Study 1, incorporating 27 trainee police interviewers, revealed positive associations between open-ended question usage and two tasks; a recognition task where trainees used a structured protocol to guide their response and a recall task where they generated examples of open-ended questions from memory. In Study 2, incorporating a more heterogeneous sample of 40 professionals and a different training format and range of tests, positive relationships between interviewers' identification of questions and adherence to best-practice interviewing was consistently revealed. A measure of interviewer knowledge about what constitutes best-practice investigative (as opposed to knowledge of question types) showed no association with interviewer performance. The implications of these findings for interviewer training programs are discussed.

Motivational interviewing to explore culturally and linguistically diverse people's comorbidity medication self-efficacy

Aims and objectives: To examine the perceptions of a group of culturally and linguistically diverse participants with the comorbidities of diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease to determine factors that influence their medication self-efficacy through the use of motivational interviewing. Background: These comorbidities are a global public health problem and their self-management is more difficult for culturally and linguistically diverse populations living in English-speaking communities. Few interventions have been tested in culturally and linguistically diverse people to improve their medication self-efficacy. Design: A series of motivational interviewing telephone calls were conducted in the intervention arm of a randomised controlled trial using interpreter services. Methods: Patients with these comorbidities aged ≥18 years of age whose preference it was to speak Greek, Italian or Vietnamese were recruited from nephrology outpatient clinics of two Australian metropolitan hospitals in 2009. Results: The average age of the 26 participants was 73·5 years. The fortnightly calls averaged 9·5 minutes. Thematic analysis revealed three core themes which were attitudes towards medication, having to take medication and impediments to chronic illness medication self-efficacy. A lack of knowledge about medications impeded confidence necessary for optimal disease self-management. Participants had limited access to resources to help them understand their medications. Conclusion: This work has highlighted communication gaps and barriers affecting medication self-efficacy in this group. Culturally sensitive interventions are required to ensure people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds have the appropriate skills to self-manage their complex medical conditions. Relevance to clinical practice: Helping people to take their medications as prescribed is a key role for nurses to serve and protect the well-being of our increasingly multicultural communities. The use of interpreters in motivational interviewing requires careful planning and adequate resources for optimal outcomes.