Applied knowledge of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): developing and assessing the utility of a situational judgement test (SJT)

Developing and assessing the ACT SJT has potentially important implications, for clinicians to self evaluate their clinical application of ACT, to assess training needs, in research trials, or for evaluating the effectiveness of ACT introductory training.<br><br>Assessing inter- and intra-personal effectiveness of those employed in healthcare is challenging, however SJTs have been proposed as a tool that could be helpful in this regard.

The current systematic review aimed to explore SJTs assessing inter and intra-personal competencies of healthcare professionals. Searches were completed on PsycInfo, Scopus and MEDLINE. A total of 12 studies met the inclusion criteria.

A narrative synthesis was completed, with SJTs found to be mostly applied to assess “professionalism”. Medical residents in specialist training represented the most assessed group. Emerging evidence from concurrent validity and training task exercises suggests that SJTs may be promising measures of inter- and intrapersonal competencies.

Implications are discussed, including the utility of SJTs outside of recruitment and academic settings, to identify training gains, assess applied competencies and potentially detect gaps in service provision.<br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31st December 2026.</i><br>