70 Assessment, Evidence-Guided Practice, and Practice Evaluation the concept of interpersonal stressors between worker and client, between fam- ily members themselves, between family members and the worker, between group members themselves, and between group members and the worker. 1. Break the class into small groups and have them help each other formulate a transactional formulation of interpersonal life stressor. Provide the follow- ing instructions: Describe behaviorally and transactionally the obstacle you will identify in these transactions—namely, when X (client) does this, Y (worker) responds this way. If needed, use the following illustrations to help students begin their analysis: ∗ “When John becomes quiet, I begin to talk too much.” ∗ “When Jane asks personal questions, I get flustered and change the focus.” ∗ “When we have serious conversations, Billy begins to clown, other mem- bers laugh, and I withdraw, feeling helpless.” ∗ “When Mrs. Bates insists that she is right and her son is wrong, I stick up for him.” 2. Follow a similar guide for life-transitional and environmental stressors. Ask students to describe how they themselves experience the obstacle (e.g., “When he is silent, he makes me feel like I am a terrible social worker. I would like to punch his lights out” “When he comes on to me, I want to vomit, and I am also scared” “When the girls get wild, I feel very much alone and like an outsider.”) Ask the students to describe from the clients’ perspectives how they experience the interpersonal obstacle in question: (e.g., “I didn’t ask for help—I am not gonna talk” “Every time I come on to her, she gets crazed” “What is she learning school? We are just having some fun and then she gets pale as a ghost.”) These class exercises prepare them for a Record of Service assignment and class presentations (see Appendix B in the textbook for a sample Record of Service form). Critical Incident Report This instrument (see appendix C of the textbook for an example) helps stu- dents and practitioners examine in depth one incident that has taken place in the helping process. It can be used in work with all client groups and in organizational intervention. A critical incident consists of 8 to 12 consecutive transactions, beginning with a client’s responses. Each intervention, including purposeful nonverbal gestures and silence, is underlined and numbered.