A motivator game for forensic vigilance training

Abstract

In the field of forensic mental healthcare, forensic vigilance is an im-portant skill of healthcare professionals to deal with criminal behaviour of pa-tients. The facilitated, collaborative card game ROTBEESTEN?! was developed to motivate professionals to enrol in forensic vigilance training. A controlled ex-periment was conducted with professionals from a Dutch forensic mental healthcare facility to explore the potential of the motivator game. The control condition involved ‘treatment as usual’: an oral presentation followed by a group discussion. Questionnaires, interviews and observations were used to measure certain participant characteristics, the quality of the game, and the user experience in both conditions. Respondents expressed significantly higher pref-erences for active, experiential learning styles than for learning from theoretical sources. In addition, respondents evaluated the quality of the game positively. Finally, respondents reported significantly higher scores on four out of five di-mensions of (game) experience in the experimental condition than in the control condition. Limitations of the study include a low response rate to the post-questionnaires. As a result, the effects of both the game and presentation could not be established reliably. From the results, we may conclude that the game ROTBEESTEN?! was evaluated more positively and has more potential to moti-vate participants for follow-up training activities than ‘treatment as usual’ (an oral presentation). These findings are in line with the preferred learning styles reported. Games seem promising tools to motivate (healthcare) professionals to enrol in training activities. Future research will establish if indeed the game’s motivating effects exceed those of an oral presentation.