Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Clinical Practice Exam

The choice of interrater reliability is appropriate in this scenario because it involves measuring the level of agreement or consistency between different individuals observing the same phenomenon. By having two staff members independently track a client’s behavior, the social worker is assessing whether both observers rate or record the behavior in a similar manner. This is crucial in social work to ensure that the data collected is reliable and not dependent on a single individual’s perspective or biases.

Interrater reliability provides confidence that the observations are valid and can support decisions made based on this data. In practice, if both staff members report similar findings regarding the client's behavior, this would strengthen the reliability of the data gathered and could lead to more informed interventions.

Other forms of reliability mentioned, such as alternate or parallel forms, test-retest, and internal consistency, refer to different methods of assessing the consistency of measurement tools rather than the agreement between independent raters.