Mesearch
What is Mesearch?
Mesearch is self-study. RT gives you feedback on your performance that you can track over time and compare to general trends in other learners.
The feedback you receive is the average ratings you have received on feedback forms that other learners have completed on your roleplays.
Feedback Forms are rooted in an empirically-based model of general counseling effectiveness. In this model, the provider aims to balance non-directive and directive counseling skills.
The “Provider Goals” at the top right of all Feedback Forms are an estimate of the roleplay counselor’s adherence to this model. Goals 1-4 estimate the counselor’s effectiveness in non-directive elements, Goal 5 reflects their effectiveness at balancing non-directive and directive elements, and Goal 6 shows whether they sufficiently incorporate directive elements into their practice.
What have we learned so far through RT?
Through Summer, 2023, RT members have completed well over 1,000 training activities, including over 500 Feedback Forms on each others’ practice. These Feedback Forms provide useful information on learners’ skill acquisition and use. Interested RT members have collaboratively analyzed data from these activities and arrived at initial conclusions, including:
1. Most learners demonstrate greater initial competence in EITHER non-directive techniques OR directive techniques.
2. With feedback, learners can build competence across both non-directive and directive techniques.
3. Achieving Provider Goals (listed in the upper right of Feedback Forms) is correlated with overall quality of therapy skill.
4. After achieving balanced competence, most learners begin expanding their competence in directive techniques.
How do I get feedback on my performance?
For a quick summary, go to your My Account page, and scroll to the bottom. This shows you the average ratings you have received on key variables from the feedback forms that have been completed on your roleplays. It also shows how these data are reflected in you meeting Provider Goals. For each Provider goal, a score of 0 means that you never met that goal, a score of 1 means that you always met that goal, and a score of 0.6 means that you met that goal on 60% of feedback forms completed on your roleplays.
The accuracy of ratings on your feedback forms is variable. It depends on the ability of the learners who completed them. As you know from your own experience, your feedback forms are not always 100% accurate. The accuracy of your feedback data will increase as you complete more roleplays and as more people complete feedback forms on your roleplays. A topic of formal research in RT (see below) is increasing the accuracy of the feedback data you receive. Updates to come!
As of August, 2023, the accuracy of the Feedback Form data in both of the above sections of the website is variable. We are fixing the problem. In the meantime, you can get accurate feedback on your performance by reaching out to the RT Director of Mesearch, Logan Bruntmyer, at bruntmyerl@uthscsa.edu.
Formal Research on Reflective Training
Currently, all of our research is educational, meaning that we are studying RT and studying ourselves as learners, but we are not involving patients in our research. Therefore, our current projects are not regulated by a Human Subjects Institutional Review Board (IRB). However, we are requesting that the UT Health–San Antonio IRB provide ethical review of our educational research practices to ensure it is inline with accepted ethical principles.
We are exploring the use of distributed role-play practice and peer-to-peer objective feedback on the development of counseling and psychotherapy skills.
