Development and interrater reliability testing of a telephone interview training programme for Australian nurse...

Area of Science:

• Nursing Practice
• Health Services Research
• Educational Principles in Research

Background:

• The Australian Nurse Practitioner Project (AUSPRAC) study's final phase involved telephone interviews with patients and nurse practitioners.
• Registered nurses were recruited and trained as telephone interviewers to collect health outcome data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report on the development and evaluation of a training process for telephone interviewers.
• To assess the effectiveness of the training in preparing nurses for data collection.

Main Methods:

• Training program development based on established educational principles.
• Post-training skills and understanding assessment.
• Data collection and analysis to evaluate training success.
• Post-training follow-up.

Main Results:

• High interrater reliability achieved (92% overall agreement).
• 100% agreement on validated survey sections; 75-90% on unvalidated sections.
• Interviewers achieved 94.7% or better against a gold standard (Kappa value 0.92+).

Conclusions:

• The telephone interviewer training program was highly effective, yielding high interrater reliability.
• High reliability attributed to validated instruments and a structured, educationally sound training program.
• Addresses a knowledge gap in operationalizing educational principles for specific research studies.