Please join us for Superlab with Katariina Keinonen on Wednesday, September 16 at 12pm Eastern. You can register here
Title: Defining and operationalizing core competencies in process-based interventions
Abstract: While mental health professionals' training programs generally aim to increase competency in specific approaches, empirical evidence to support the importance of therapist competence for successful intervention delivery remains limited. In fact, available findings suggest that variation in competence is often not associated with variation in treatment outcomes. This conclusion may reflect methodological issues in defining and operationalizing competency. Reliable evaluation of therapist competence requires carefully validated assessment methods that are sensitive to prior training, responsive to further skill development, and applicable across diverse training contexts.
The PROCEED (Process-Based Competence Evaluation Method to Establish Evidence-Based Dissemination Practices) research project addresses these challenges by developing a novel competency task (PBCT) and a complementary self-assessment measure. Grounded in principles of Process-Based Therapy, the PBCT conceptualizes therapist skillfulness as the ability to accurately identify individual intervention needs and key characteristics of therapist behaviors in simulated therapy discussions that utilize various cognitive-behavioral intervention approaches. This talk will describe the development process of the novel tools and discuss potential future directions of competence assessment. Special emphasis will be placed on lessons learned during the development phase and initial data collection.