CLIENT BEHAVIOR IN COUNSELING AND THERAPY SESSIONS - DEVELOPMENT OF A PANTHEORETICAL MEASURE

The purpose of this study was to revise the Hill et al. (1981) Client Verbal Response Category System. The client behavior system (CBS), which includes 8 nominal, mutually exclusive categories, was created. Psychologists indicated that clients generally are more productively involved when engaged in cognitive-behavioral exploration, affective exploration, insight, and changes than in resistance, agreement, requests, and recounting. When the CBS was used to rate predominant client behavior in middle sessions of 8 cases of brief individual therapy, adequate interjudge agreement was found, with cognitive-behavioral exploration occurring most frequently. Client experiencing and client ratings of helpfulness differed across CBS categories, suggesting concurrent validity for the measure. In a second study, 9 interviewer queries elicited different interviewee behaviors in 39 structured interviews, providing evidence of construct validity.