Therapist Structure Of Participation: An Application Of P-Technique and Chronographic Analysis

Four therapists' participation in six therapies were analyzed at the utterance level. Therapist's utterances (N= 5,504) were rated on 39 categories of the Stuttgart Interactional Category System in two early, two middle, and two late sessions, providing a primary and a cross-validation sample. Application of the P-technique revealed four stable and reliable therapist participatory factors (i.e., Objective Information Exchange Seeking, Directing Insightful/Painful Work, Self-Involving Disclosure, and Advice Giving Information), accounting for 39% of the total variance. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant therapist by phase interaction on all factors, with most differences occurring on the work and disclosure factors in the middle phase and between two groups of therapists (within treatments). Further examination using chronographic analyses revealed (1) some shortcomings in the analysis of variance approach, and (2) significant strengths in identifying naturally occurring episodes of therapist participation. Results are discussed in terms of the need to further develop the use of the P-technique to discover generalizable structures of therapist participation and to track quantitative variations in such structures using chronographic analysis.