[What do clients do with recommendations? A study of compliance in child guidance]

Compliance in counseling--a rather neglected field of study--was investigated in conjunction with 100 Viennese family consulting cases. Compliance is defined in two ways, namely on the one hand as the remembrance of the contents of the consultation with the psychologist, and on the other hand as the actual application of the advice given. The results show that parents store a reduced version of the consultation which over the time they constantly recall. Moreover, the amount of advice actually implemented proved to be dependent on the kind of the problem. The significance of these results is discussed with regard to practice of counseling.