Question asking in active listening scale for early adolescents: Behavioral measure development and initial...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Intervention Science

Background:

• Stereotypes impede social connections crucial for adolescent development.
• Active listening is a promising intervention strategy, but lacks validated measures for adolescents.
• Existing measures do not capture the nuanced behaviors of active listening in early adolescence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To validate a new coding scheme for assessing behavioral dimensions of active listening in adolescents.
• To examine the efficacy of active listening interventions in enhancing social connection.
• To develop a reliable measure for active listening skills in early adolescents.

Main Methods:

• A validation study involving 293 adolescents in a live interviewing task.
• Development of a theory-driven intervention focused on transformative curiosity and listening.
• Utilized a coding scheme to assess adolescents' use of open-ended and follow-up questions.

Main Results:

• The coding scheme identified two dimensions: open-ended and follow-up questions, with acceptable internal consistency.
• The measure demonstrated sensitivity to changes in questioning skills post-intervention.
• Follow-up questions correlated positively with empathy and perceived interviewer skill; open-ended questions' effect was moderated by disclosure elicitation.

Conclusions:

• A novel, validated measure of active listening behaviors (questioning) for early adolescents has been established.
• This measure can effectively assess the impact of interventions designed to improve adolescent social connection.
• The findings support the use of active listening training to enhance empathy and relational skills in adolescents.