Date of Award

Summer 2024

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Kate Flory

Abstract

Clinical supervision has long been utilized as the primary method of clinical training and evaluation for health service psychology doctoral students. Despite the central role that supervision has played and continues to play in the training of psychologists, little scholarly attention has been given to identifying effective methods for fostering competency in providing supervision. The lack of research in this area is concerning, given the accumulating evidence that negative supervision experiences, such as ineffective or inadequate supervision, are reported by a substantial proportion of trainees (21-92% across studies). Moreover, these experiences are associated with important proximal and distal training outcomes, including supervisory relationship quality, perceived quality of clinical training, and future career plans (e.g., considering an alternative career). One promising approach for increasing the number of trained supervisors is through training peer supervisors, advanced graduate students who provide supervision and clinical support to more junior students. However, there is a dearth of evidence testing this approach, despite such programs being frequently used by psychology and other mental health provider training programs. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by testing a peer supervision program developed for health service psychology doctoral students that integrated evidence-based supervision practices and processes for guiding supervisory decision-making. Participants included 16 doctoral students in Clinical-Community and School Psychology at the University of South Carolina who were enrolled in at least one psychotherapy practicum course. Aims of the study included: (1) assessing the extent to which peer supervisors demonstrated an increase in supervision-related declarative knowledge following completion of a supervision training workshop, (2) evaluating whether peer supervisors demonstrated an increase in supervisory competence over the course of participation in the program, (3) determining the extent to which the program was implemented as intended, and (4) assessing the degree to which participants considered the program feasible, acceptable, and appropriate. Findings from this initial evaluation suggest that the program yielded positive benefits for program participants. Peer supervisors demonstrated a 34.3% increase in supervision-specific declarative knowledge scores from pre- to post-training, as well as a 7.99% increase in total Supervisor Evaluation and Supervisory Competence scale scores from pre- to post-program participation. Proximal implementation indicators, such as the frequency of evidence-based supervision practice use and peer supervision meeting frequency, demonstrated that the program was largely implemented as intended. Participants rated the program as highly feasible, acceptable, and appropriate overall. Program participants identified several opportunities for refining the program, including aligning the program more closely with existing clinical training activities and improving the supervisor-supervisee matching process. Implications for future research, as well as for peer supervision program development and implementation, are discussed.

Rights

© 2024, William Bradley

Download

Share

COinS