Unpacking leader responsiveness effects of emotional cultivation groups: Using the variance partitioning method.

Abstract

Theoretically, group leaders can play a significant role in contributing to the effectiveness of group counseling intervention. However, very few studies have examined the group leader's effects on the clientrated group counseling outcomes. We hypothesized that responsive group leaders who were caring, understanding, and respectful could serve as safe havens and secure bases to facilitate their group members' social and emotional cultivation. The current investigation examined the effects of leader responsiveness on group members' social-emotional cultivation (SEC). A total of 307 Taiwanese children and adolescent clients across 53 groups participated in an eight-session emotional cultivation group intervention. There were five time points of data collection (i.e., preintervention, third group session, sixth group session, postintervention, and a 4-week follow-up), and the variance partitioning method was used to partition longitudinal data into within-member, within-group, and between-group variance components. The results of hierarchical linear modeling revealed that the group leader's responsiveness significantly predicted group members' SEC at each of the three levels of analysis: Individual members had greater change in SEC when (a) they perceived higher leader responsiveness in a time period compared to the average rating of leader responsiveness across all time periods, (b) they perceived higher leader responsiveness compared to the average rating of leader responsiveness across all members in the same group, and (c) the group-as-a-whole perceived higher leader responsiveness than the average rating of leader responsiveness across all groups. Public Significance StatementThe results show that group leader responsiveness is related to positive changes in social-emotional cultivation for children and adolescents participating in group counseling. The positive change in socialemotional cultivation occurred: (a) when the leader was more responsive in a given time period than they usually were, (b) when some group members saw the leader as more responsive than other members of the group, and (c) when a group-as-a-whole saw their leaders as more responsive than other leaders.

Changes in group counseling engagement and conflict and growth in emotional cultivation for children and adolescents.

“…Theoretically, it is also important to examine within-group differences and between-group differences in predictors, like group climate. For example, Wang et al (2022) showed that greater member-perceived leader responsiveness and greater group-as-a-whole-perceived leader responsiveness were both related to member improvement. The variance partitioning of predictor variables needs to be done manually in multilevel models as described by Kivlighan and Kivlighan (2016).…”