Although genograms are widely utilized in the field of marriage and family therapy, there has been no empirical research establishing marriage and family therapists' accuracy in using the genogram as an information‐gathering tool. This article reports results of an evaluation of how accurately marriage and family therapy doctoral students record content information on genograms. Subjects included 17 doctoral students in AAMFT accredited marriage and family therapy programs who constructed genograms from a fictitious scenario. The results indicate that marriage and family therapy doctoral students are highly accurate in recording named persons' names and symbols; moderately accurate in recording unnamed persons, occupations, relationship descriptors, medical issues, personal issues and descriptive phrases, and other significant symbols; and most inaccurate in recording dates and ages. Students' accuracy scores for recording content data on genograms were not found to be significantly correlated with experience level in the doctoral program or self‐rated genogram construction ability. Implications for marriage and family therapists and trainers are provided, including a call for more standardized instruction in genogram construction.
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