A taste of scoring

A taste of scoring – and development of a basis for peer support strategies

'''Abstract''': In a structured exercise, participants can experience the basic approach and learn how to recognize and classify spoken sentences as open questions, closed questions, reflections or affirmations. The exercise-format may also later on be used as a strategy in peer support groups.

'''Overview''': This exercise is appropriate when the participants have learned about OARS. The exercise may be part of an early introduction to MITI.

'''Guidelines I''': Have the group work in triads: One speaker, one listener, one observer. After 20 minutes, they switch roles; hence the exercise takes an hour as a whole.
'''Speaker role''': Identify a change that you are considering, something you are thinking about changing in your life, but have not definitely decided. It might be something you feel two ways about. Tell the listener about the change you are considering.
'''Listener role''': Use the strategies and principles you have learned during the course (OARS), and carry out a motivational interview. The session takes 10 minutes.
'''Observer''': Concentrate on the listener. Write down the first 3-4 words of every sentence (paragraph) the listener says. A new line for each utterance. Furthermore, keep track of the time, and stop the interview after 10 minutes. Wrap up with a summary.

'''Guideline, continued''': After the interview, the participants spend the following 10 minutes walking thorough the observer’s notes and sentence by sentence decide whether it is an open question, closed question, reflection or an affirmation. When having done that, the participants may go through the interview again and discuss how to change, for example, a closed question into an open or how to change a question into a reflection – and what impact such a change may have on the interview, i.e. the speaker.

The above is repeated three times and thereby allowing each participant to be listener, speaker and observer.

'''Notes''': In plenum, when setting up the exercise, you may write examples on how a dialogue may look when it is written down as such a list of ‘the first 3-4 words of listeners’ utterances. You may thereafter illicit from the group how to recognize reflections, open and closed questions and affirmations from the list of words. You may even discuss with the group how to change closed questions into open, or into reflections, before you divide the group into triads and set up the exercise. When debriefing, you may even introduce how to count reflections, open questions, and closed questions and how to calculate ratios (Ratios between open and closed questions, and ratios between reflections and questions).

Contributed by: [http://www.motiverandesamtal.org/user/28 Christina Näsholm]