Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1975, Vol. 43, No. 1, 102
An Instrument for Assessing Caller-Reported Benefits of Calls to a Telephone Crisis Service David C. Speer and Mark Schultz Crisis Service of Erie County, Buffalo, New York Generally, little has been done to assess the effects of telephone counseling. The current series of studies were conducted to develop a preliminary instrument for obtaining evaluative data from hotline users. An initial a priori pool of 28 6-point Likert rating items, comprising seven scales, was constructed from a crisis intervention model for telephone counselors. The subjects in all three studies were people who had called one of the crisis service hotlines, who had been referred to the agency's walk-in clinic, and who showed up for their initial interview. The validity criterion used in all three studies was instrument ability to reliably differentiate caller's ratings of their calls to agency hotlines from callers' ratings of their most recent call to a friend, family member, or acquaintance in which they discussed a personal problem. The agency hotline and friend, family member, or acquaintance forms of the instrument were administered on a random alternating basis to clients as they arrived for their initial interviews. Each client rated either his call to the agency or a call to a friend, family member, or acquaintance. Although Studies 2 and 3 involved multivariate analyses, the basic validity design was a simple two-sample comparison. In Study 1 the agency and friend forms of the instrument were administered to 34 subjects. The seven a priori scales and the total scores of the two samples were analyzed by t tests. Among the eight comparisons, the two groups differed reliably and in the expected direction only on the scale assessing how the caller had felt since the call. In Study 2, in an effort to replicate these generally null findings, the questionnaire was administered to an additional 81 callers using Reprints and an extended report of this study may be obtained without charge from David C. Speer, Crisis Service, 560 Main Street, Room 405, Buffalo, New York 14202.
the same comparison condition and random assignment. Multivariate analyses of these data indicated that telephone counselors received reliably higher ratings than friends, family members, or acquaintances on five of the seven scales and the total score. Because an examination of the items that differentiated the two samples indicated that only 8 of 28 items did so at less than the .OS level, the data were subjected to principle-component method factor analyses in which three, five, and seven fatcors were rotated and identified. On the basis of this and the sample difference probability values, 14 items comprising four scales were retained as the revised instrument. In Study 3, using the same design and sampling procedure as in Studies 1 and 2, the revised instrument was administered to an additional 72 subjects. The telephone counselors received higher mean ratings than friends, family members, or acquaintances on all of the scales with the sample difference on three of the scales and the total score attaining statistical significance at the .06 level or better. The scale-factor names and number of items are as follows: communication of understanding by counselor—5 items; surveying of alternatives, planning, and action— 5 items; "goodness" of call—4 items; caller's emotional state since call—1 item (one item is scored on two different scales). Interscale correlations, with one exception, are in the +.25+.58 range, suggesting both practical scale independence and a desirable degree of concurrent validity. Although these findings are in need of replication with more representative samples of hotline callers, and under different situational conditions, they suggest that the revised instrument has promising potential in beginning effort to assess telephone counseling effectiveness. (Received March 4, 1974)
102
An Instrument for Assessing Caller-Reported Benefits of Calls to a Telephone Crisis Service David C. Speer and Mark Schultz Crisis Service of Erie County, Buffalo, New York Generally, little has been done to assess the effects of telephone counseling. The current series of studies were conducted to develop a preliminary instrument for obtaining evaluative data from hotline users. An initial a priori pool of 28 6-point Likert rating items, comprising seven scales, was constructed from a crisis intervention model for telephone counselors. The subjects in all three studies were people who had called one of the crisis service hotlines, who had been referred to the agency's walk-in clinic, and who showed up for their initial interview. The validity criterion used in all three studies was instrument ability to reliably differentiate caller's ratings of their calls to agency hotlines from callers' ratings of their most recent call to a friend, family member, or acquaintance in which they discussed a personal problem. The agency hotline and friend, family member, or acquaintance forms of the instrument were administered on a random alternating basis to clients as they arrived for their initial interviews. Each client rated either his call to the agency or a call to a friend, family member, or acquaintance. Although Studies 2 and 3 involved multivariate analyses, the basic validity design was a simple two-sample comparison. In Study 1 the agency and friend forms of the instrument were administered to 34 subjects. The seven a priori scales and the total scores of the two samples were analyzed by t tests. Among the eight comparisons, the two groups differed reliably and in the expected direction only on the scale assessing how the caller had felt since the call. In Study 2, in an effort to replicate these generally null findings, the questionnaire was administered to an additional 81 callers using Reprints and an extended report of this study may be obtained without charge from David C. Speer, Crisis Service, 560 Main Street, Room 405, Buffalo, New York 14202.
the same comparison condition and random assignment. Multivariate analyses of these data indicated that telephone counselors received reliably higher ratings than friends, family members, or acquaintances on five of the seven scales and the total score. Because an examination of the items that differentiated the two samples indicated that only 8 of 28 items did so at less than the .OS level, the data were subjected to principle-component method factor analyses in which three, five, and seven fatcors were rotated and identified. On the basis of this and the sample difference probability values, 14 items comprising four scales were retained as the revised instrument. In Study 3, using the same design and sampling procedure as in Studies 1 and 2, the revised instrument was administered to an additional 72 subjects. The telephone counselors received higher mean ratings than friends, family members, or acquaintances on all of the scales with the sample difference on three of the scales and the total score attaining statistical significance at the .06 level or better. The scale-factor names and number of items are as follows: communication of understanding by counselor—5 items; surveying of alternatives, planning, and action— 5 items; "goodness" of call—4 items; caller's emotional state since call—1 item (one item is scored on two different scales). Interscale correlations, with one exception, are in the +.25+.58 range, suggesting both practical scale independence and a desirable degree of concurrent validity. Although these findings are in need of replication with more representative samples of hotline callers, and under different situational conditions, they suggest that the revised instrument has promising potential in beginning effort to assess telephone counseling effectiveness. (Received March 4, 1974)
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