The measurement of interview structure in five types of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic interviews

In a companion report (Beck & Perry, 2008), we reviewed the literature with regard to interview structure from which we derived seven operationalized quantitative measures. This report examines these measures as applied to five commonly used interview types--psychodynamic therapy sessions, dynamic interviews, Relationship Anecdote Paradigm (RAP) interviews, the Guided Clinical Interview and the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSM-IV axis I--each administered to the same six patients (n = 30). Two clinicians independently rated each interview using the Global Level of Interview Structure Scale (GLISS). Both the GLISS and six of the seven operationalized measures differed across interview types but not between subjects. Factor analysis yielded a single factor solution composed of five measures, not including a sixth measure (percentage of interviewer interventions that were questions) which was used as a solitary variable. Together the single factor and the percentage of questions predicted 75.2% of the variance in GLISS ratings, although no association was found between the factor and the percentage of questions. The GLISS and the operationalized measures captured distinct but complementary dimensions of interview structure. Discriminant analysis indicated that, on average, 80% of all interviews were correctly classified as to their type. Our main findings confirm that we can now accurately measure the degree of interview structure. Further research is needed to examine how these measures apply to other interview settings, such as psychoanalytic or cognitive-behavioral treatments, in the social sciences.