Chapter 9: Evaluation of Consulting or Program Effectiveness

Question 1

What are two different methods for evaluating MCP effectiveness, and what do they provide?

Answer 1

1. Formal - planned, structured, and deliberately executed
2. Informal - unplanned, unstructured, and spontaneous

Both allow the MPC to plan and refine their everyday practice, ensure accountability, and demonstrate that they are committed.

Question 2

What 4 parties are MPCs held accountable to when practicing?

Answer 2

1. The Client
2. The MPC themself
3. The party funding the services
4. The professional body that the MPC belongs to

Question 3

Anderson and colleagues (2002) identified four broad effectiveness indicators as the target for evaluation, what are they?

Answer 3

1. Quality of Support - represents the quality of the practitioner–client relationship, which plays a key role in a successful outcome of service provision (Norcross & Lambert 2018; Petitpas, Giges, & Danish, 1999; Poczwardowski et al., 1998).
2. Psychological Skills and Well-Being - This indicator is somewhat contingent upon the approach taken by the consultant. For example, if the MPC’s theoretical orientation is grounded in CBT, then the aim may be symptom reduction, such as a reduction in pre-competition anxiety or a decrease in fear and negative self-talk.
3. Response to Support - Over the course of the intervention, are the athlete’s understanding of psychological skills and ability to employ them improving? What is the athlete’s attitude toward the support provided? Is the athlete adhering to the intervention and practice of skills?
4. Performance - Performance can be viewed as the ultimate arbiter with regard to the effectiveness of sport and performance psychology.

Question 4

What is Systematic Reflective Practice?

Answer 4

A purposeful and complex process that facilitates the examination of experience by questioning the whole self and our agency within the context of practice. This examination transforms experience into learning, which helps us to access, make sense of and develop our knowledge-in-action in order to better understand and/or improve practice and the situation in which it occurs.
(Knowles, Gilbourne, & Cropley, 2014, p. 10)

Question 5

What are the 4 knowledges that are essential to effective practice, also known as knowledge in action?

Answer 5

1. Empirical Knowledge - Knowing the science underpinning the practice.
2. Personal Knowledge - knowing and understanding oneself and how personal characteristics influence interpersonal relationships
3. Aesthetic Knowledge - captures the art of practice or the art of doing sport and performance psychology
4. Ethical Knowledge - concerned with doing what is right and good and managing ethical conflicts

Question 6

In the Gibbs Model of Reflective Practice, what are the 6 stages?

Answer 6

1. Description of the experience: What happened?
2. Feelings and thoughts about the experience: What were you thinking and feeling?
3. Evaluation of the experience, both good and bad: What was good and bad about the experience?
4. Analysis to make sense of the situation: What sense can you make of the situation?
5. Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently: What else could you have done?
6. Action plan for how you would deal with similar situations in the future or general changes you might find appropriate: If it arose again, what would you do?