Contingency Management Competence Scale

Adapting the Helpful Responses Questionnaire to Assess Communication Skills Involved in Delivering Contingency Management: Preliminary Psychometrics

“…Consequently, the basic vignette structure of the instrument was maintained but with item content contextually linked in one patient scenario as if occurring in a single visit. Communication skills targeted for measurement were as specified in an available version of the Contingency Management Competence Scale [CMCS; (Petry & Ledgerwood, 2010)], an observational coding measure with strong prior psychometric validation (Petry et al, 2010). The author drafted an initial set of vignette stimuli for the six HRQ-CM items, and later revised them in accord with feedback from two former addiction treatment program directors.…”

“…For SP encounters, raters were trained via the same two-hour conceptual orientation to CM principles and practices followed by four hours of applied practice scoring sample SP encounters in which the author intentionally portrayed clinicians of varying skillfulness. After training, each rater scored the trial’s 64 SP encounters (blind to timing of assessment) using the CMCS (Petry & Ledgerwood, 2010). This required 28–30 hours per rater, such that scoring of an SP encounter took on average 26–28 minutes.…”

Predictive Validity of Addiction Treatment Clinicians' Post-Training Contingency Management Skills for Subsequent Clinical Outcomes

“…The CM training in the parent trial was guided by active learning strategies, with clinician development of therapy-specific skills via observation of live trainer demonstrations, participation in dyadic role-plays, and receipt of performance-based trainer feedback. As Hartzler and colleagues (2014) report, this resulted in robust and durable benefits across clinician-level implementation domains—the most prominent of which was that all CM-trained clinicians exceeded a competency benchmark for CM skillfulness (Petry & Ledgerwood, 2010). While partial mediation suggests potential additional influence of other factors, the development of therapy-specific skills did figure prominently in how in-training exposure to CM predicted subsequent outcome of CM-exposed clients.…”

“…These six component clinical practice behaviors are communication-focused, and prescribed for technical delivery of CM interventions that target therapy attendance (Petry & Ledgerwood, 2010). Yet, they are closely drawn from a larger set of clinical practice behaviors intended in staff delivery of prize-based CM interventions targeting substance abstinence, for which large-scale instrument validation was previously conducted (Petry et al, 2010).…”

“…To assess CM delivery skill, standardized patient (SP) interactions were conducted wherein an actor presented at clinicians’ offices to enact a 20-minute, audio-recorded encounter to portray a newly-enrolled OTP client. Two independent raters reviewed all SP encounters, scoring each with the Contingency Management Competence Scale (Petry, Alessi, Ledgerwood, & Sierra, 2010; Petry & Ledgerwood, 2010). The CMCS contains nine Likert-rated items (1 = Very Poor, 7 = Excellent), six of which reflect CM-specific clinical practice behaviors: 1) notifying of earned reinforcement, 2) planning for prospective reinforcement, 3) delivering earned reinforcers, 4) assessing client interest in reinforcers, 5) providing social reinforcement, and 6) linking the reinforced behavior to broader client treatment goals.…”