Correlations of session evaluations with treatment outcome

Do evaluations of psychotherapy sessions predict treatment outcome? Clients (n = 40) and their therapists rated each session (n = 16 per client) of their brief therapy on the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ), which yields indices of session Depth (power, value) and Smoothness (comfort, safety). External raters rated tape-recordings of half of the sessions. SEQ ratings by one of two principal therapists were strongly correlated with client improvement on self-report measures; those of the other therapist were not. Clients' SEQ ratings did not show the expected correlations with improvement. External raters' ratings of session Smoothness were significantly correlated with client improvement on some measures.