ASSESSMENT AND VALIDATION OF DIAGNOSTIC INTERVIEWING SKILLS FOR THE MENTAL-HEALTH PROFESSIONS

A behavioral test was developed to assess the quality of diagnostic in terviewing skills of (future) mental health professionals. Two aspects of diagnostic interviewing ability are distinguished: process skills, reflecting the interpersonal and communication skills; and content sk ills referring to the information-gathering ability of the interviewer It was found that diagnostic interviewing can be reliably measured wi th respect to interrater reliability. However interviewer performance on one case proved to be a poor predictor of performance on other case s. It was concluded that a large number of cases is required to obtain reliable scores of general diagnostic interviewing ability. Validity was supported by the correlational analyses. Process skills were stron gly related to patient satisfaction, whereas content skills were relat ed to the amount of relevant information given by the patient and the accuracy of the diagnostic formulation and treatment plan.