Development of an Instrument to Evaluate Audiologic Counseling Skills

This study describes the development of an instrument designed to evaluate audiologic counseling skills. In simulated counseling sessions, a trained actor portrayed a parent, and ten graduate audiology students role-played counseling sessions as audiologists informing the "parent" that her infant has a hearing loss. The ten sessions were videotaped, and three raters viewed the taped sessions while evaluating counseling skills with a new evaluation tool, the Audiologic Counseling Evaluation (ACE). The ACE was found to have excellent internal reliability (alpha = .91) and moderate-to-good inter-rater reliability. Raters' subjective evaluations of the tool were generally positive, and students' evaluations of the simulated counseling experience were overwhelmingly so. This instrument can be used by audiology faculty and clinical instructors to help students improve their counseling skills before interacting with parents. It can also be used in clinical settings for professional development by way of self- and peer-evaluation.