The PQuest Method
A psychological skills training method.
Psychological skills are not only something we can understand — they are something we can practice.
The PQuest Method provides a framework for turning psychological skills into active, contextual practice. It is designed around experiences in which people engage with situations, make decisions, encounter changing conditions, and adapt their responses.
Rather than teaching a single “right” way to respond, PQuest focuses on practicing how to navigate variation, uncertainty, and trade-offs across different contexts.
Practice before it matters.
Knowledge is essential, but knowing what to do is not always the same as being able to use that knowledge when a situation unfolds.
In fields such as healthcare and aviation, simulation- and scenario-based training create opportunities to practice skills and decisions in realistic contexts before they are needed in real-world situations.[1,2]
PQuest builds on the broader principle behind this approach: practice should not begin only when the real situation arrives.
The PQuest Method brings active, contextual practice to psychological skills — creating opportunities to engage with situations, make decisions, encounter change, and adapt within the training environment.
Principles behind the method
PQuest is built around a set of principles that shape how psychological skills are practiced.
Active practice
Skills are practiced through active engagement rather than passive exposure to information. The learner takes part in the experience and makes meaningful decisions.[3]
Context matters
The same response may not work equally well in every situation. PQuest places emphasis on understanding circumstances, goals, and possible trade-offs rather than applying fixed rules.
Adaptation over fixed answers
Situations can change. New information can matter. PQuest encourages practice in reconsidering a situation and adapting a response rather than searching for one universally “correct” answer.[4]
Learning through consequences
Decisions become meaningful when their possible consequences can be considered. PQuest uses consequences as part of the practice experience, helping make relationships between situations, actions, and outcomes visible.
Feedback without judgment
Feedback is intended to support reflection on situations, decisions, and consequences — not to label the person or reduce the experience to simply being “right” or “wrong.”[5]
Together, these principles support a form of practice designed around engagement, context, reflection, and adaptation.
From method to training
The PQuest Method is the general framework. A PQuest Training applies that framework to a specific psychological skill or area of practice.
This allows the same underlying method to support different training goals, populations, and contexts, while each PQuest Training is designed around its own specific focus.
PQuest Trainings
PQuest BraveEvidence-informed by design
PQuest is designed as an evidence-informed psychological skills training method.
Its development draws on psychological research relevant to learning, active practice, feedback, contextual variation, and the transfer of training. These principles inform the rationale behind the method and the way its Programme Theory is constructed.[3–7]
Evidence for individual principles, however, is not the same as evidence for PQuest as a whole. Their integration within the PQuest Method represents a theoretically grounded approach whose specific effects require empirical investigation.
For this reason, PQuest distinguishes between theoretical rationale, evidence supporting individual principles, and evidence about the effects of PQuest itself.
View evidence and referencesEvidence & limitations
PQuest is an evidence-informed method, but evidence supporting its underlying principles should not be interpreted as evidence that the PQuest Method itself is effective.
The specific effects of PQuest Trainings require empirical investigation. In particular, improvements observed within a training environment should not automatically be assumed to transfer to real-world behaviour or to broader psychological outcomes.[6,7]
PQuest therefore treats learning within the training, real-world performance, and transfer as distinct questions rather than interchangeable measures of success.
As research on PQuest develops, evidence relating specifically to the method and to individual PQuest Trainings will be reported separately from the literature supporting their theoretical foundations.
References
[1] McGaghie, W. C., Issenberg, S. B., Cohen, E. R., Barsuk, J. H., & Wayne, D. B. (2011). Does simulation-based medical education with deliberate practice yield better results than traditional clinical education? A meta-analytic comparative review of the evidence. Academic Medicine, 86(6), 706–711. DOI
[2] Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). FAA-Industry Training Standards (FITS). Official FAA resource
[3] Keith, N., & Frese, M. (2008). Effectiveness of error management training: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 59–69. DOI
[4] Fernandez, R., Rosenman, E. D., Plaza-Verduin, M., & Grand, J. A. (2022). Developing adaptive performance: A conceptual model to guide simulation-based training design. AEM Education and Training, 6, e10762. DOI
[5] Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284. DOI
[6] Sala, G., Aksayli, N. D., Tatlidil, K. S., Tatsumi, T., Gondo, Y., & Gobet, F. (2019). Near and Far Transfer in Cognitive Training: A Second-Order Meta-Analysis. Collabra: Psychology, 5(1), 18. DOI
[7] Schwaighofer, M., Fischer, F., & Bühner, M. (2015). Does Working Memory Training Transfer? A Meta-Analysis Including Training Conditions as Moderators. Educational Psychologist, 50(2), 138–166. DOI
PQuest-specific research
No empirical studies of the PQuest Method have been reported yet.