Four Studies Toward and Empirical Foundation for Group Therapy

Abstract

In the first of four studies reported here, it was demonstrated that employing randomly selected client disclosures as goals in a Goal Attainment Scale method of assessing outcome in group therapy yielded positive outcome results, adding support to the use of this method of therapy outcome assessment. In the second study, employing the GAS method it was demonstrated that the percentage of positive and negative statements per minute had more impact on outcome than the number of minutes spent discussing the problem. In the third study, employing the same outcome assessment methodology, it was shown that the greater the discloser's difference in emotional induction versus subsequent reduction when discussing his or her disclosure, the greater the positive therapeutic outcome from the group. In the final study, a new method of global improvement based on the DSM III was compared with the GAS outcome. It was shown that the DSM III global assessment methodology was sensitive to the same outcome measured by the ...