The Therapeutic Bond Scales: Psychometric Characteristics and Relationship to Treatment Effectiveness

The Therapeutic Bond Scales assess the quality of the therapeutic relationship from the patient\u27s perspective. The therapeutic bond is composed of 3 aspects: working alliance, empathic resonance, and mutual affirmation. Scales were developed to measure these aspects and the therapeutic bond as a whole. The correlations between these scales and 2 measures of outcome (session quality assessed by the patient and termination outcome evaluated by nonparticipant raters) were examined. All scales were significantly correlated with session quality. Therapeutic bond was significantly correlated with termination outcome in both a linear and a curvilinear fashion, suggesting that, at least in the initial phase of therapy, the therapeutic bond can be too high as well as too low

Exploring influences of supervision on psychotherapists’ professional development: Correlates across career-level cohorts

This exploratory study aims to extend and strengthen the empirical case for supervision as a facilitator of professional growth, as outlined in an established conceptual model, by exploring its correlates among psychotherapists across their entire professional career. Ratings of the impact of supervision by 6267 psychotherapists of different professions, theoretical orientations, and career levels in many countries who were currently in supervision were correlated, separately for each of five career cohorts, with aspects of their treatment experience, work situation, and personal characteristics. Large percentages of psychotherapists at all career levels, including senior psychotherapists, engaged in supervision and rated its impact on their development positively. Growth-facilitating supervision was associated broadly but moderately in all career cohorts mainly with interpersonal aspects of therapists’ treatment experience, with supportive work settings, and with caring and expressive personal characteristics. Some differential findings among cohorts also reflected potential developmentally based functions of supervision. The implications of results were considered both for supervisory practice, training and for future supervision research

Evaluating the quality of social work supervision in UK children's services: comparing self-report and independent observations

Understanding how different forms of supervision support good social work practice and improve outcomes for people who use services is nearly impossible without reliable and valid evaluative measures. Yet the question of how best to evaluate the quality of supervision in different contexts is a complicated and as-yet-unsolved challenge. In this study, we observed 12 social work supervisors in a simulated supervision session offering support and guidance to an actor playing the part of an inexperienced social worker facing a casework-related crisis. A team of researchers analyzed these sessions using a customized skills-based coding framework. In addition, 19 social workers completed a questionnaire about their supervision experiences as provided by the same 12 supervisors. According to the coding framework, the supervisors demonstrated relatively modest skill levels, and we found low correlations among different skills. In contrast, according to the questionnaire data, supervisors had relatively high skill levels, and we found high correlations among different skills. The findings imply that although self-report remains the simplest way to evaluate supervision quality, other approaches are possible and may provide a different perspective. However, developing a reliable independent measure of supervision quality remains a noteworthy challenge