| Description |
The effectiveness of psychotherapy depends on a combination of specific interventions and nonspecific interventions, or common factors (CFs), that are widely used across different approaches in therapy. CFs are generic characteristics and behaviors across different approaches of therapy such as the provision of hope and warmth. CFs are essential for therapists and patients to work together as a team and accomplish goals in therapy sessions. Traditionally, research has analyzed specific interventions and CFs separately, to determine which is more important. However, this approach has made it hard to understand how CFs and specific interventions are related. Recent research found that CFs are rated lower when the therapist is prevented from using specific intervention techniques. The current study aimed to extend this work by investigating the relationship between CFs and specific interventions in real therapy sessions. An observational approach was used to code sessions that were not manipulated, in contrast to past research, for the purpose of the study. A total of 199 coded therapy sessions, from a student population, were gathered and coded using the Multitheoretical List of Therapeutic Interventions (MULTI). We hypothesized that therapists' use of CF items would be positively related to the use of more specific interventions. However, the results in this study found that therapists' CF scores were generally unrelated to their use of theoretical interventions, except for a significant relationship between cognitive intervention use and CF items. Our study demonstrated the importance of examining intervention techniques in naturalistic settings, with the need to further investigate the relationship between CFs and specific intervention techniques in psychotherapy. |
