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Client Application-Free time Boredom
Courtney McLaughlin
RTH 401 Client Assessment
Debbie Logan
10/24/16
Client Application-Free time Boredom
I performed the Free Time Boredom assessment on Kate (stage name to protect identity). Kate is a 48-year-old female, who has been a friend of my family for years. She works at our local hospital, Mission Hospital, as a purchaser. She is a single mom of two sons, one 23 the other 20, and lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. She has strong religious beliefs, due to the fact that her youngest child has a severe health problem, which has also lead her to have depression. Kate spends most of her time at work, with her kids, and loves reading a good book. I figured Kate would be an excellent person for the assessment because she when she was younger she was an up and coming body builder, and I was interested to see what the scores would reflect now that she is older. After calling Kate, we decided to meet at my church for the first meeting on Wednesday, October 19, 2016 at 5:00p.m; we then made our second meeting to discuss the results for Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 5:00p.m., as well.
Kate seemed very nervous, before we actually started the assessment. Kate kept ringing her hands, would stutter on her answers (usually no stutter present), and would turn red when answering, as if embarrassed. She kept asking what this assessment actually assessed, and what it would say about her. I think she was more nervous about what the results would tell me about her, and tell her about whom she was more than anything.Once we began the assessment, she seemed to relax once she realized that the questions were not so deep and personal. She asked me to repeat the questions a lot,and asked what the questions were actually asking. For example,she had a lot of questions on the statements about time and was confused on how to answer. I also noticed that she answered some statements really fast whether it be positive or negative, while a few other statements seemed to take awhile for her to answer and I could see on her face that she was really thinking about her answer. Each question, she would ask me what the numbers meant so eventually I just wrote them down for her, so she could physically see the scale herself.
The following day we had a meeting to discuss her results. Kate still seemed just as nervous as the day before if not more so. I believe that this was due to the importance she had for the results, she didn’t want me to see her in a negative light or see her in that light either. When I asked if she was ready to hear her results, she said “not at all” this may have to do with her depression, but not completely sure. This type of response maybe typical for some populations that I work with later on in my career, so it was nice to get that experience before it is a real life situation. When discussing her results, Kate offered not exactly an excuses, but comments to defend herself on why her scores were low on a certain aspect. Her comments were something like “I do not have time to be physical anymore, because I am too busy looking after my youngest son.” I think this second meeting was a lot harder for her, since it gave her scores on her life that she might not have wanted to realize.
The Free Time Boredom assessment is a 20 statements assessment that measures he degree to which the participant is bored and takes around 15-20 minutes total to take and score (Ragheb, Merydithburlingame,n.d.). The assessment measures four aspects of boredom: Meaningfulnessdoes the participant have a purpose during free time, Mental Involvementdoes the participant have enough to think about, Speed of Time does the participant have enough satisfying activity to time, and Physical Involvementdoes the participant have enough physical movement(Ragheb, Merydithburlingame, n.d.).There are both positive and negative statements in the assessment to prevent the client from answering all the statements with the same number in order to sound better to the CTRS(Ragheb, Merydithburlingame, n.d.). Kate’s sub-scores in the four components were all within a few points of each other. Her physical involvement sub-score was 2.8, her mental involvement sub-score was 3, hermeaningfulness sub-score was 3.6, and her speed of time sub-score was 3.2. These sub scores led her to have a total score was 3.15. These scores although they were low, are not as bad as they could be.Her meaningfulness sub-score was the highest, which did not surprise her; she said it was probably that high because of her religion, and helping her youngest son. Her lowest score was in physical involvement,she said this was probably the case because she spends so much time caring for her sons, and not as much on herself.
Based off of the results and my interpretation, I came up with two functional goals and objectives that focused on Kate’s physical involvement and mental involvement. I chose the following goals because Kate scored the lowest in these areas. Goal: To improve the physical involvement aspect in the Free Time Boredom Assessment. Objective: At least once a week, Kate will go on a 30-minute walk around her neighborhood stopping no more than twice for 5 weeks to increase her physical involvement in freetime.Goal: To improve the mental involvement aspect in the Free Time Boredom Assessment. Objective: Once a day, Kate will participate in a puzzle of her choose, (Ex. Crossword puzzle) the puzzle for 30 minutes for 3 weeks to increase her mental involvement in freetime.
Overall I really enjoyed giving this assessment it allowed me to practice giving it to someone that I knew, to make it easier when I have to give it to real clients later on. Throughout this process I learned several things about myself. I learned that I get extremely nervous in this type of situation, and learned that I will need to work on this for future assessments. I talked really fast throughout the assessment which lead for me to have to repeat the questions a few times, this is something else that I will have to work on down the road. I also learned that this assessment could be good to use with most populations everyone has free time, and may need to learn positive free time activities. Also individuals may need to learn how to change their time after an injury this assessment would be good to use in these cases.
I would say one of my strengths during this assessment would be just listening to the clients. Kate would ask about the questions, she would talk about why she gave an answer, and talked about why she thought her scores were what they were. This allowed me to ask questions and get deeper and more involved with the client. I am interested in who they really are and helping them reach their goals. If I had to do this assessment againthere is not a lot I would change, but I would try and calm myself down so I would not be nervous or make my clients more nervous. I would also slow down to make it easier for my client to follow and understand. Other than that I feel that the assessment went really well, the location and time was perfect, and I successfully accomplished what I needed to do.
Reference:
Ragheb, M. G., Merydith, S. P., & burlingame, j. (n.d.). Assessment Tools. Retrieved October 20, 2016, from Boredom_Assess Review.pdf