A new way to measure how crisis counseling skills improve
Being a good listener can sometimes involve more than just listening. It can also mean knowing when and how to say just the right thing—a conversational skill that's invaluable to a crisis counselor.
Researchers at Cornell University have created a method to track how crisis counselors improve their conversational skills over time. Crisis counselors frequently engage in high-pressure conversations, and this new approach aims to understand how they enhance their abilities and identify which counselors may benefit from additional support early in their careers.
The method, developed by a team from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and Crisis Text Line, is based on natural language processing (NLP) to identify key "downturn" moments in crisis conversations, where counselors may struggle to keep clients calm and engaged. By analyzing more than 1.5 million conversations between 2015 and 2020, the researchers scored the outcome of each interaction, with higher scores indicating more positive results.
They then compared counselors' performance at two points in their careers to measure improvement. The team's approach focuses on learning from mistakes rather than replacing human counselors with AI. While further testing is needed before potential deployment in counselor training, this research demonstrates the potential of NLP models to enhance crisis responder skills through experience.
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