Supervision in speech-language pathology is one facet of the field in which all speech-language pathologists have had to engage. The more that is known about the process of supervision the better future speech-language pathologists can be prepared to interact in a professional setting. Many variables are present in supervision related to the field of speech-language pathology. One variable which has received only minimal attention relates to the effect knowledge about a student clinician\u27s number of accrued clinical clock hours has on the evaluation of the clinician\u27s skills. The assumption is often made that a student clinician with more clinical clock hours will provide more efficacious services than a student clinician with fewer clinical clock hours. It has been found that during interactions with student clinicians, supervisors regularly regard all clinicians in a similar manner, and in evaluations, supervisors do not use the information of the amount of accrued clinical clock hours to determine the effectiveness of clinician\u27s interactions.
The purpose of this study was, then, to determine if knowledge of student clinicians\u27 accrued clinical clock hours influenced supervisors\u27 evaluations of student clinicians. Subjects were 26 university supervisors from six midwestern states. Stimuli were videotapes of a beginning clinician with 19 accrued clinical clock hours interacting with a client and an advanced clinician with 225 accrued clinical clock hours interacting with a different client. Subjects rated the advanced and beginning clinicians\u27 performances on a nine-point Likert scale using the Cognitive Behavioral System (Leith, 1989).
All data were group analyzed according to one of six treatment conditions by information versus no information and by one order effect versus the second order effect. Response similarities and response differences were calculated by using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) procedures. The data revealed no significant difference in evaluations based on knowledge of accrued clinical clock hours. Implications for future research were reviewed