Development of a Measure of Client Expectations for Therapy

An abundance of research has focused on clients' expectations regarding psychotherapy, yet there is still little consensus regarding the implications of that research. One of the primary problems associated with past research on therapy expectations is related to the development and validation of the measures of expectations that were used in the various studies. For many of the studies, questionnaires were developed solely for the purpose of one study, and questionable measurement of validity was utilized. This study attempted to be an initial step towards empirically developing a measure of client expectations about psychotherapy. This was done utilizing an analogue design and exploratory factor analysis. Results demonstrated some limited initial support for the proposed three factor measure of therapy expectations (Therapy Expectations Form-TEF) based upon the previous literature in this area. Facilitative Conditions, Directive Expectations, and Collaborative Expectations factors emerged; these factors demonstrated good internal consistency, but limited interpretability. In an attempt to address the concurrent validity of the TEF, predictions were made based on various personality variables, as measured by the California Personality Inventory (Gough, 1996). These predictions were not supported by the results of the current study. One major limitation of the study was the item content of the TEF, which affected the factor structure and interpretability. Future research should include refining the items of the TEF, collecting data with a new sample, and reexamining the resultant factors in order to potentially refine the construct of therapy expectations.