title: The Test of Accurate Perception of Patients' Affect (TAPPA): an ecologically valid tool for assessing interpersonal perception accuracy in clinicians.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A clinician's ability to infer patients' thoughts and feelings is a critical component of high quality care. The goal of this article is to present a new test to measure this ability in clinicians, called the Test of Accurate Perception of Patients' Affect (TAPPA).
  
  
  METHODS
  Audiovisual clips were taken from patients' actual medical visits. The patients reviewed the videotape after the visit to identify their thoughts and feelings during the visit. This information was used to extract short audiovisual clips for which the correct answer was the patient's report of the thought or feeling associated with that clip. The TAPPA contains 48 audiovisual clips, each responded to in a multiple choice format.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The TAPPA showed good psychometric properties (optimal mean and good variance, adequate internal consistency, and strong re-test reliability) and convergent validity with other tests of emotion recognition. In addition, the test showed predicted better performance by female than male participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The TAPPA promises to be a valuable tool for research and education on provider-patient relationships and quality of care.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A tool for testing clinicians' understanding of patients' thoughts and feelings may contribute to better quality of care and to improved selection and training.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Electronic address: j.hall@neu.edu.
authors.forename: Judith A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: Amy N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Ship
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: Mollie A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Ruben
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Curtin
authors.affiliation: Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA.
authors.forename: Debra L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Roter
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Clever
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: C Christopher
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, USA.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pounds
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000379:methods; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012938:Social Perception; D014741:Video Recording
keywords: Accuracy of interpersonal perception; Communication skill; Emotion recognition; Empathic accuracy; Provider-patient communication