Assessment of Patient and Therapist Perspectives of Process: A Revision of the Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scale

Abstract

The present study was designed to revise the Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scale (VPPS), an external-rater completed measure, into both patient and therapist-rated versions. The VPPS was altered into two versions by using simple pronoun changes and then submitted to a principal components analysis in order to identify component factors. This procedure resulted in two identical forms of the VPPS, one completed by the therapist (VPPS-T) and one completed by patients (VPPS-P). These scales have identical items and factor structures. Preliminary results suggest that the VPPS-P and VPPS-T may be useful measures of psychotherapy process when perspectives of session activity is desired from both patients and therapists.

Facets of the therapeutic alliance and perceived progress in psychotherapy: relationship between patient and therapist perspectives

“…Thus, patient confidence and commitment to therapy, as described in this study, may be similar to what has previously been termed 'patient involvement' or 'investment' and has been identified as a significant factor in the alliance as well as the process and outcome of psychotherapy (Saunders, 2000;Gomes-Swartz, 1978;Holtzworth-Munroe, Jacobson, DeKlyen, & Whisman, 1989;O'Malley, Suh, & Strupp, 1983;Kolb, Beutler, Davis, Crago, & Shanfield, 1985;Smith, Hilsenroth, Baity, & Knowles, 2003).…”

Treatment Process Predictors of Program Completion or Dropout among Minority Adolescents Enrolled in a Brief Motivational Substance Abuse Intervention

“…The Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scale - Short (VPPS-S; Smith, Hilsenroth, Baity, & Knowles, 2003) was used to evaluate the constructs of therapeutic alliance and client involvement. The VPPS-S is a modified version of the original Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scale (VPPS; Gomez-Schwartz, 1978) and its 44 items use a 5-point Likert response format ranging from not at all (1) to a great deal (5).…”

“…Given the strong psychometric properties of the VPPS-S subscales, the patient participation subscale of the VPPS-S was used to measure client involvement. Inter-rater reliability, indexed via Pearson correlation coefficients for VPPS-S subscales, ranged from .79 to .94 (Smith et al, 2003). …”

The Individual Therapy Process Questionnaire: Development and Validation of a Revised Measure to Evaluate General Change Mechanisms in Psychotherapy

“…This measure includes 168 items and consists of the five content facets of dialogue, relationship, affective process, exchange process and role implementation and has parallel forms for the patient and therapist perspectives. The TSR was further developed in the Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scales with its revised client and therapist perspective versions; the six dimensions of the measure are therapist exploration, negative relationship, patient psychic distress, patient participation, therapist warmth and friendliness, and patient dependence (Smith, Hilsenroth, Baity, & Knowles, 2003;Suh, O'Malley, Strupp, & Johnson, 1989). Two other well-established session reports assessed only from the patient perspective are the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (Stiles, 1980;Stiles et al, 1994), a measure of global evaluation of the session with the four components of depth, smoothness, positivity and arousal, and the Session Impact Scale (Elliott & Wexler, 1994), a measure addressing specific in-session impacts with the three components of task impacts, relationship impacts and hindering impacts.…”