Amber Argo
Student Counseling HelpLine,
Texas A&M University
1201 Harvey Rd. APT 154 College Station, TX 77840
(979) 696-9307
The Student Counseling HelpLine at Texas A&M University is a telephone service available to students who need to speak
to a counselor when traditional counseling services are not available. The HelpLine requires a test that Twill indicate to
them that volunteers have developed the active listening skills required to work on the HelpLine. It. is also important to
know if volunteers maintain these skills over time.
The research project to be presented attempted to assess if active listening skills are developed through training and if they
acre maintained after training. This was attempted by administering the Crisis Center Discrimination Index to volunteers
before training, immediately after training, and six or nine months after training. This index is currently used by the
HelpLine to measure volunteers' active listening skills. This study is also using two supervisor ratings of active listening
skills to evaluate the validity of the Crisis Center Discrimination Index and maintenance of skills over time; one set of
ratings were completed at the end of training and another will be completed at a period of six or nine months after training.
The study will correlate these supervisor ratings with the indexes given at the same time. A high correlation; will support
the use of the index in future selection of HelpLine volunteers.
27 HelpLine workers were included in this research. The data shows that there is not a significant improvement in scores
on the Crisis Center Discrimination Index through training. An analysis of the internal consistency of the index shows that
it has adequate reliability- a lack of reliability does not appear to be the cause of the lack of improvement in scores through
training. Other possible causes of a lack of improvement in index scores are that training does not improve active listening
skills or that the index is not a valid measure of active listening skills. It should be noted that the index. indicated that most.
workers had sufficient active listening skills to work on a HelpLine even before training took place.
There also does not appear to be a correlation between supervisor ratings and scores on the Crisis Center Discrimination
Index. The raters were shown to have high inter-rater reliability. At this point, it can be speculated that one of the results of
this research will be that the Crisis Center Discrimination Index as it is currently used will not be validated to measure
active listening skills sufficiently for the purpose of the HelpLine. The research on changes over time and the collection of
the second data set correlating the Crisis Center Discrimination Index and supervisor ratings vias still in progress at the
time this summary was written. This research will be completed before the presentation and discussed further at that time.
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