Research note. An evaluation of motivational interviewing as a method of intervention with clients in a probation setting

Summary There have been increasing calls on the probation service todemonstrate effectiveness with the recent Evidence Based Practiceguide (Home Office, 1998) explicitly citing evaluative researchas a means of achieving this. This article describes the quantitativepart of a research project undertaken within Middlesex ProbationService to evaluate the introduction of motivational interviewingas a technique to aid probation officers in their assessmentand supervision of offenders who misuse alcohol and drugs. Resultssuggest that, irrespective of stratification, all offendersindicated an improvement in their questionnaire scores duringtheir contact with the probation service. However, there weremore statistically significant improvements in the attitudinalscales amongst offenders whose officers were trained in thetechnique compared to officers who were not trained in motivationalinterviewing.