The facilitative interpersonal skills exercise - Assessment of therapeutic competence with the German language version

Background It is of great importance to measure interpersonal skills of psychotherapists for the research of therapeutic effects, training and further education. One of the few instruments available to measure these skills is the facilitative interpersonal skills (FIS) test. Objective The aims of this study were 1) to present the FIS test, 2) to examine psychometric and descriptive properties and 3) to examine the associations between the total FIS score, age, gender and level of education of the performers. Material and methods Psychology students and psychologists in psychotherapy training were included in this cross-sectional study. In the FIS test the participants should verbally react to 13 patient videos that staged challenging therapy situations. Each of the audio-recorded reactions were assessed by three trained raters. Results The total FIS score of the 115 study participants (mean agex202f;= 31.97 years, SD +/- x202f;7.94; femalenx202f;= 90, 78.3%; in psychotherapeutic trainingnx202f;= 72, 66.1%) averaged at 3.24 (SD +/- x202f;0.42). The reliability proved to be good (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC(FIS total value)x202f;= 0.69; Cronbach's alpha x202f;= 0.958). Among the video clips three were significantly less difficult and four clips were significantly more difficult. A learning effect and a fatigue effect became apparent throughout the clips. Trainee therapists achieved significantly higher scores than psychology students. Conclusion The FIS test proved to be reliable in a large sample. It was identified that a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 9 clips should be used during the test, which should be selected according to the level of training and clip difficulty. The FIS test is of considerable benefit for standardized and empirically based measurement of interpersonal therapist skills in research, training and further education.