The Working group for the Competency and Dissemination Strategic PIllar has been actively working to achieve the strategic goals established by the ACBS Board. This website is an ongoing effort to organize information relevant to issues of competency and dissemination of practices that fall under the umbrella of Contextual Behavioral Science.
What has the working group been doing?
Guided by this aim from the ACBS Board's call to action: “We envision a scientific community in which members of ACBS could find evidence informed guidelines on how to learn, how to apply, and how to measure their skill development over time,” the working group has
● Held bi-weekly and/or monthly meetings to determine the process and content of the information needed to create a thorough report for the ACBS Board.
● Reviewed definitions of competency and explored how to write about competency in ways that are consistent with the principles of CBS.
● Conducted an extensive literature review to assess the current published status of competency training in CBS approaches.
● Hosted two panels at the ACBS World Conference in 2022. One panel shared the results of the competency literature review. The other panel explored international issues in competency and dissemination.
● Hosted a panel at the ACBS World Conference in 2023 discussing the strengths, challenges, and future directions of competency assessment in contextual behavioral science approaches.
How is competency defined?
Competencies describe the behaviors to be displayed by all members of a community applying specified interventions with specified populations.
Competencies are complex and dynamically interactive clusters of behaviors that enable a person to execute a professional activity with a myriad of potential outcomes (Marrelli, 1998). These clusters may include:
● integrated knowledge of concepts and procedures;
● skills and abilities;
● behaviors and strategies;
● attitudes, beliefs, and values;
● dispositions and personal characteristics;
● self-perceptions; and
● motivations (Mentkowski, 2000)
Elements of Competencies involve the whole person and are:
● transmittable/teachable (relevant to effective dissemination)
● observable (behaviorally stated)
● measurable (based on assessment: exams or skills practice demonstration)
● containable (not so ambiguous as to be never-ending in nature)
● practical (implementable, applicable to a specific area)
● verifiable/linked to external validity
● parsimonious
● criterion referenced rather than norm referenced
● derived by experts
● interpersonal behaviors that support the therapeutic alliance (the behaviors need to be specified, reliable, trainable, etc.)
● flexible and transferable across settings
Competencies also need to be continually reevaluated and redefined as commensurate with new research findings. Supervision, training, and consultation are essential to this process. Supervision provides the context for competence to be developed, providing the essential tools to achieve ongoing development (initiating learning and ongoing skill uptake), performance monitoring, perspective-taking, and evaluating “meta-competence” - the ability to assess what one knows and what one doesn’t know. Meta-competence (perspective taking) helps fulfill the professional responsibility to pursue and support competence throughout one’s career.
Competency and Dissemination panels from the World Conference
- International Perspectives on CBS Competency and Dissemination - Panel presented by Sean Wright, Carmen Luciano, Zhuohong Zhu, Amanda Muñoz-Martinez, Steven Hayes, Hannah Bockarie (June 2022)
- Putting the task force report into action - Panel presented by Maria Karekla, Rhonda Merwin, Steven Hayes, Louise McHugh, Kenneth Fung (June 2022)
- Report from the ACBS Strategic Pillar for Competency and Dissemination - Panel presented by Raul Manzione, Alycia Zink, Sean Wright, Giovambattista Presti, Robyn Walser (June 2022)
- CBS Competencies: The good, the bad, and the need - Panel presented by Steve Hayes, Russell Kolts, Raul Manzione, Robyn Walser, and Sean Wright (July 2023)
Competency measures for CBS-informed approaches
Choose below