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Testing a model for the process of telephone crisis intervention
Author(s) -
Echterling Lennis G.,
Hartsough Don M.,
Zarle Thomas H.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/bf00918283
Subject(s) - crisis intervention , health psychology , telephone call , psychology , affect (linguistics) , intervention (counseling) , call centre , social psychology , crisis communication , applied psychology , process (computing) , service (business) , public health , business , public relations , medicine , nursing , engineering , computer science , political science , marketing , communication , psychiatry , telecommunications , operating system
A four-stage model of telephone helping was tested by rating 59 calls to a crisis intervention service. The rating instrument was the Crisis Call Interaction Form, a process measure with 19 behaviors in four categories: establishment of a helpful climate, assessment of the crisis, affect integration, and problem solution. Hypotheses stated that helper behaviors would vary differentially across portions (thirds) of calls. After controlling for length of call and within-call similarities, residual variances in each third of the calls were subjected to planned orthogonal comparisons. Hypotheses were generally supported: Climate decreased from first to middle third; assessment decreased in the last third; affect tended to be highest in the middle third; and problem solution increased steadily throughout the calls. However, helper behaviors from all categories were present in every portion of calls. The term "phase" was offered to replace the stage concept as a more fluid model of telephone crisis intervention.