title: Some problems in the use of "attitude" and "atmosphere" scores as indicators of staff effectiveness in institutional treatment.
abstract: Most institutional investigators have used paper-and-pencil measures of staff attitudes, opinions, and beliefs about "mental patients," "mental illness," and treatment programs or "atmosphere" to describe individual staff or aggregate staff groups. Popular scales for assessing the latter staff characteristics are noted, with a review of empirical relationships to treatment effectiveness. A review of uncontrolled and frequently confounded variables related to both effectiveness, and attitude and atmosphere scales suggests that several problems exist in the use of such measures as even indirect assessments of staff activity. Specific questions are raised for investigation which need to be answered before such scales can provide more than "demographic" description of treatment staff. Direct assessment of actual staff behavior appears to be a better alternative for determining what staff do.
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders; D008603:Mental Health; D011581:Psychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*