Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1:
• Are we going to take demographics on
counselors and directors?
• What counseling workforce are we looking
at?
• What does “frontline staff” mean?
• Recovery status, is recovery status one of
the reasons you entered the field, use of
tobacco products,
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1:
• Educational level, cj background, licenses and
credentialing, supports to go back to school,
degrees/educational level, educational goals,
what age were you when you entered the field,
salary questions (annual vs. hourly, full vs. parttime), employee or contractor, benefits currently
rec’d (retirement, health insurance, vacation,
sick leave), benefits you’d like to receive, do you
plan to be in the wf 5 yrs from now
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1:
• Tech issues – do you have access to a computer at work, email,
electronic records, web-based system, tele-medicine,
• First/second/third career, recovery needs, age, ethnicity, socio-eco
status, tenure in labor force
• Age started working, part-time/full-time, marital status, # of
dependents, total household income, primary wage earner for
family, number of other jobs?, places of employment, perceptions of
other agencies, perceptions of labor market, # of hours for your
commute to work, where do you live (rural, suburban, frontier,
urban) and where do you work
• If people are in recovery, what flavor of recovery are you? (12 step,
methadone, etc.)
• How many agencies have you worked in?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1:
• Agency demographics: annual budget,
marketing efforts, unfilled positions, where
they are located (ex: within hospitals)
• Other thoughts:
– what is it that keeps the people who stay?
– Demographics of directors: educational
backgrounds
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• We could still get some demographics, although
some things would need to be deleted – group 1
thoughts
• We could make it simpler – good operational list
of job roles, we could find out if these are parttime/full-time positions, salary range, etc. –
group 2
• For more specific questions, such as ethnicity,
we could ask what percentage of your WF are X,
Y, Z, etc. – group 2
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• We could differentiate between what questions
we ask about the “main/primary/core” job
categories and what we ask about “other” jobs –
in other words, we could ask gender, race, and
other key categories about their counselors and
ask more general questions about other parttime or volunteer staff (the laundry list)
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• At the facility level, do we want to know
questions about the entire facility or do we want
to know specifics about the individuals in that
facility?
• Include a grid of key characteristics that people
can just check off for each role
• How do we do this w/o turning off the
respondents?
• At what level do you want to be able to describe
the workforce?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• What do we want the report to show - that will
determine what data we collect?
• Less questions – better than we have now
• How do we get percentages of key
characteristics if we don’t have people fill out
matrices? Will they be guessing? Is this a
question we should ask in focus groups?
• Bigger issue: defining who provides direct
services
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• How many people do direct services? (include
operational def of direct services) How many receive
direct services; how many are certified?
• How many of those people are male/female, etc.?
• How many people do recovery services?
• How many of those people are XXX?
• Difficulties around defining clinical vs. non-clinical staff
• Should we include many specific definitions of job
categories or should we give broad definitions of clinical
staff vs. non-clinical staff?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• Defining clinical staff: we could either be
very conservative and talk about things
like tx planning in terms how we define
what it means to be a part of the clinical
staff or we could include a more flexible
definition that would capture a broader
universe of workers such as the recovery
workers
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• Get from cathy – definitions of clinical and
recovery staff
• Clinical services and recovery support services –
should we include medical staff too (given
pharm protocols)?
• How many people are doing quality control?
Should we separate out clinical supervision as a
sub-category? What percentage of the
counselor WF has supervisory responsibility?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 1: (from day 2)
• Do we need to focus this study on getting
us the real information about what roles
there are and if there are people doing that
work? And then leave it to other studies to
provide key characteristics about those
individuals?
• What is the basic information we need in
terms of demographics?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• Key points: define the workforce, who are
they?, not only clinical directors and line
staff but also clinical supervisors
• People in recovery – what is the training
need? How flexible will the agency be if
the employee wants further education?
(i.e, time off)
• How much pre-service education in SA?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• Need for 3 different kinds of surveys:
– Clinical directors may know more about future needs
than line staff
• Is there an HR dept or any one in the agency
who oversees the future needs of the workforce?
• How can we make sure that our SA counselors
will be prepared to work in interdisciplinary
teams?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• Workload – how much paperwork, how many
meetings (not just case load)
• WHY? – clinical supervisors are really part of
sustaining and so are the CEOs b/c of being
able to financially support the organization
• Stigma of the profession and the stigma of the
client and how does that affect needs for training
and needs for support to be in the workforce in
the future
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• This is a field that started in a more recoveryoriented arena and is working toward
professionalization and how does that affect our
training needs and needs for changing our
perception in terms of recruitment/retention
• How do (or do they) our colleagues feel
respected for what they do (again related to
stigma)?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• Interested in developing specific questions for
clinical supervisors
• Challenges: case load issue and work load in
general – how do we change the expectations
for education and how that impacts the feeling of
being overwhelmed, how can we measure the
agreement between the various levels in the
organization and how they measure the needs
of the organization
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• What – organizational size and how this
relates to how supportive they can be in
terms of educational needs, HR needs,
training needs, etc.
• Other thoughts: questions that address the
level to which people can do the core
competencies? How do performance
appraisals relate to this issue?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• How many vacancies they have and in which
positions? How long does it take to fill them?
Which have been the most difficult to fill? How
long did the vacancies remain open?
• What do we want this workforce to know how to
do?
• Process of training or continuing ed – do you
have money in your budget for training? Do you
have someone on staff who trains on EBPs?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• What incentives do you provide to
employees?
• What questions do you need to have to
find out what training is needed for clinical
supervisors and/or whether clinical
supervisors even receive cs training?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 2:
• Some query about issues related to
cultural diversity – do you provide a
premium salary for bi-lingual staff, for
example? Is there any formalized training
on cultural competency? (from Mike S.)
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Complexity and blurriness of movement within
and between agencies
• Compensation is not the driver, but is more
influenced by issues of workplace culture –
procedural justice, distributive justice,
professional autonomy,
• Frequency and quality of clinical supervision
and, more generally, organizational
management
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Aspects of compensation and benefits
• Performance based rewards (i.e., billable hours,
small rewards at staff meetings, etc.)
• Tap into organizational opportunities for
advancement (especially the more “mom and
pop” organizations which are more inter agency
opportunities than intra agency opportunities)
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Are there career ladder opportunities
linked to additional education, certification,
etc.?
• What is the workforce that we are
studying?
• Primary client base – both in past and
present jobs
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• What the workforce looks like and how they are
supported and movement of the individuals in
and between organizations – analysis plan
maybe should include network analysis – the
behavior of the system itself may inform some of
the needs questions
• Professional organizations and provider
organizations – membership and work in these
may provide career ladder opportunities that are
not available in small agencies
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Hiring practices and infrastructure pieces
that help to maintain a stable system and
whether those things are in place
– Formal methods for employee selection
– Merit or performance based system for
performance evaluation
– Minimum standards for hiring
– At least for the core staff
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Leadership development
• Technology questions – access, skills, do they have
emails
– How many PCs in clinic and who is allowed to use them? What
kind of internet access?
– Electronic record keeping – does that have implications for
ATTCs (SMART Treatment Planning) and the work we would do
in training staff
– Web-based follow-up – do you do electronic based aftercare and
recovery support
• Or ask a broader question about what kind of follow up
you do – this would include telephone, etc.?
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Are electronic records used for more than
billing?
• Why do we want to ask this and what is
the implication for training?
– Does this tell us anything about computer
access or skills?
• Limited resources = need to prioritize the
questions we want to ask
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Not just whether there are computers, but
are they useful
– For trainings
– For further surveys if we want to do future
studies online
– Go back to previous national survey and look
at those questions
Refining the Research Questions:
Small Group Report Out
• Question 3:
• Other key trends we should consider here?
– Generational issues – example younger WF interested in “onboarding”
and social networking instead of retirement plans
– How prepared are facilities to take advantage of new pharmacological
options?
– Electronic records
• Infrastructure questions: do you have an HR dept? Do you have a
contract with an EAP? Formality of recruitment mechanisms? Do
you advertise on the web, for example?
• Is there a way of capturing what the pipelines are for how agencies
tap into info and training on whatever the EBP of the moment is?
(another piece of the “do you make time for training” questions)
Other thoughts
• Questions related to therapeutic philosophy/tx
philosophy – recovery support provided (relapse
prevention, continued recovery)
• Core functions provided – what are the services
provided
• Can we meet with a group of directors in
connection with the upcoming SAAS meeting to
find out what kinds of questions they are
interested in and what kind of data they have
access to?
Next Steps
• SAMHSA - Sift thru all recommendations—
synthesize info and input
• CSAT will come up w/tenative plan—in
collaboration w/ Dr. Clark, ATTC, Jack, et al
• Work with external stakeholders to get buy in
• Go to SAAS meeting to do focus groups, at least
discussion
• Also-NASADAD meeting
• Ask I-SSAT data CSAT Project Officer to speak
to ATTC Directors to familiarize them w/I-SSAT
and the data available
NEXT STEPS
• I-SSAT is available on the Web for
queries—not available by Center
• Speak to the Directors re. the Workforce
• All Get a copy of the I-SSATS survey
• Decide whether CS is important enough to
survey/focus group separately
• Sit down and figure out the resources and
what the target groups are/where they are
located?
Next steps
• Thank you robert!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ET AL…..