Chapter 9 Developing Psychological Skills Solutions
Question - 1 : - What competencies are required for becoming an effective psychologist?
Answer - 1 : -
For becoming an effective psychologists, following competences are essential:
(а)General Skills (b) Observational Skills (c) Specific Skills
(a)General Skills:
•General skills are essential for all professional psychologists.
•These skills include personal as well as intellectual skills.
•Once ensuring that a student has these skills subsequent training in his/her area of specializations to him/her intellectual and personal skill are as follows:
Interpersonal Skills: Ability to listen and be empathic. It may be verbal or non-verbal.
•Cognitive:
— Ability to solve problems — Having curiosity and flexibility
•Affective Skills:
— Openness to ideas — Agreeableness — Honesty
•Expressive skills: Ability to communicate in verbal and non-verbal form.
•Reflective Skills:
— Intrapersonal intelligence —Ability to examine own motives,attitude and behaviour.
•Personal skills:
— Personal hygiene — Time management
(b)Observational Skills:
Psychologists should have training in objectives and systematic observation.
•They should have skill to observe various aspects of surrounding including people and varying events.
•Psychologists should engage in observing people and their actions with following precautions:
— Patience. — Optimistic curiosity.
— Respecting clients privacy.
— Awareness of people reactions, emotions and motivation.
— Training good questions which could be answered during observation.
(c)If the psychologist wants to work in a specialized field then professional training in specific skill development is essential.
The main specific skills are as follows:
(a) communication skills (b) Psychological testing skill
(c) Interviewing skill (d) Counselling skill
Question - 2 : - What are the generic skills needed by all psychologists?
Answer - 2 : -
General/Generic Skills:
•These are essential for all professional psychologists.
•These skills include personal as well as intellectual skills.
Generic (intellectual and personal skills) are as follows:
Interpersonal Skills: Ability to listen and be empathic. It may be verbal or non-verbal.
•Cognitive:
— Ability to solve problems — Having curiosity and flexibility
•Affective Skills:
— Openness to ideas — Agreeableness — Honesty
•Expressive Skills: Ability to communicate in verbal and non-verbal form.
•Reflective Skills:
— Intrapersonal intelligence
— Ability to examine own motives, attitude and behaviour.
•Personal skills:
— Personal hygiene — Time management
Question - 3 : - Define communication. Which component of the communication process is most important? Justify your answer with relevant examples.
Answer - 3 : -
Communication is a conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional process in which feelings and ideas are expressed as verbal and/or non-verbal messages that are sent, received and comprehended.
Component of the Communication:
The mort important component of communication is speaking with the use of language.
•Language involves use of vocabulary which includes words by symbols.
•Communicator must know how to use words appropriately in organized and understandable form.
•It is necessary to be clear and precise.
•Communication takes place within a context and needs to consider the other’s frame of reference.
•It is important for the speaker to adjust his vocabulary level and choice of words to
fit the level of the listener.
•Slang expressions, words unique to a culture, euphemism can become obstacles in good communication.
•Listening may appear as a passive behaviour, as it involves silence. But this is far from true.
•Listening requires a person to be attentive, patient, non-judgmental and have the capacity to analyze and respond.
•It is an active process.
•Hearing and listening are not the same, hearing is biological mechanism. It involves reception of a message through sensory channels.
Question - 4 : - Describe the set of competencies that must be kept in mind while administering a psychological test.
Answer - 4 : -
.•Developing the skills of psychological testing is important since tests are important tools used for the assessment of individuals for various purposes. Proper training is required for administration, scoring and interpretation of tests.
•Psychologists study individuals, differences based on factors such as occupation, age, gender, education, culture, etc.
•While using psychological test, following factors must be kept in mind:
1.An attitude of objectivity 2. Scientific orientation
3. Standardised Interpretation must be kept in mind. For example, in organizational and personnel work, in business and industry, where specialized tests are used to select individuals for specific jobs, it is essential to use actual performance records or ratings as a criterion for establishing validity of a test.
•Suppose the personnel department wants to know whether a certain psychological test can help it to identify potentiality of best stenographers.
•It must be established that the test differentiates among employees of several performance levels.
•It should be found the performance on the job of a newly employed worker selected on the basis of test indeed matches with his/her test scores.
Question - 5 : - What is the typical format of a counselling interview?
Answer - 5 : -
Interview refers to purposeful conversation through face-to-face interactions.
•It follows a basic question-answer format.
•First, the objectives of the interview are set.
•The interviewer then prepares on interview format.
•There is a basic format which is followed, regardless of the interview’s purpose; i.e., an interview has three stages:
— Opening — The body — The closing
A.Opening of the Interview:
1. In involves establishing report between the two communicators, so that the interview becomes comfortable.
2. Generally, the interviewer starts the conversation and does most of the talking at the outset. This serves two functions:
(a)It establishes the goal of the interview
(b)It gives the interviewee time to become comfortable with the situation and the interviewer.
B. Body of the Interview:
1.This is the heart of the process.
2.In this stage, the interviewer asks questions in an attempt to generate information and data that are required to fulfil/required for the purpose.
Sequence of Questions:
To accomplish the purpose of an interview, the interviewer prepares set of questions – called a schedule for different domains or categories he/she wants to cover.
1.To form the schedule, the interviewer must first decide on the domain/categories under which information is to be generated. For example for questions used in job interview (box 9.5), the interviewer selected various categories such as not use’ of the organization last worked for, satisfaction with the past job, views on product etc.
2.These domains/categories and the questions within them are formed ranging from easy to answer to difficult to answer.
C. Closing of the Interview:
While closing the interview, the interviewer should:
1.Summarise what she/he has been able to gather.
2.Give a chance to the interviewee to ask questions or offer comments. One ‘ should end witfc a discussion of the next step to be taken.