Absence of conflict of interest.
Citation
Salzer, M. S., Katz, J., Kidwell, B., Federici, M., & Ward-Colasante, C. (2009). Pennsylvania Certified Peer Specialist Initiative: Training, employment and work satisfaction outcomes. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 32(4), 301-305.
Highlights
- The study examined the relationship between Certified Peer Specialist training and employment for training participants.
- The authors compared employment rates for participants before and after the training program using training program records and data from a survey administered one year after the training program.
- The study found that a higher percentage of training participants were employed after the Certified Peer Specialist training than before the training.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not account for trends in outcomes before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Certified Peer Specialist training; other factors are likely to have contributed.
Intervention Examined
Certified Peer Specialist training
Features of the Intervention
The Certified Peer Specialist training consisted of a 75-hour curriculum delivered over a two-week period to people in recovery from substance abuse. The training covered job-specific knowledge appropriate to the peer support specialist role, including communication skills, cultural and workplace competency skills, engagement and outreach strategies, and problem-solving skills. The training also provided tools for the trainees’ own recovery from substance abuse. The Institute on Recovery and Community Integration at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania provided the training at three regional sites across Pennsylvania. Four trainings occurred between March 2005 and July 2006.
To be eligible for the program, applicants had to have either a high school diploma or a general educational development certification.
Features of the Study
The authors compared employment rates for participants before and after the training program, assessing the outcomes of 57 people who completed a survey one year after the intervention ended. The authors did not conduct statistical tests of significance for the employment outcome.
Findings
Employment
- The study found that 82 percent of those who received the Certified Peer Specialist training were employed one year after the training compared with 74 percent who were employed before the training.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
It is not clear how the authors assessed the pre-training employment status for the 57 people who answered the one-year follow-up survey. If the authors collected data on pre-training employment at the same time as they collected the data on post-training employment, then data were only collected for this outcome at one point. In addition, because the pre-training data would be a retrospective measure of employment, the data might be less reliable and more prone to bias than if the data had been collected before the intervention.
The authors compared the outcomes of participants measured before and after they participated in the Certified Peer Specialist training program. For these types of designs, the authors must observe outcomes for multiple periods before the program to rule out the possibility that participants had increasing or decreasing trends in the outcomes examined before enrolling in the program. That is, if participants who had increasing employment tended to enroll in the program, we would anticipate further increases over time, even if they did not participate in the program. Without knowing the trends before program enrollment, we cannot rule this out. Therefore, the study receives a low causal evidence rating.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not account for trends in outcomes before the intervention. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to the Certified Peer Specialist training; other factors are likely to have contributed.