The Beech Brook Group Therapy Assessment tool: a pilot study

Assessment is a critical component of therapeutic intervention as it serves as the basis from which clinical goals and objectives are derived. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of reliable group therapy assessment instruments, especially for children and preadolescents who have severe emotional disturbances.

The purpose of this study was to test reliability of a newly developed group therapy assessment instrument for use with children who have serious emotional disturbances that require placement in a residential or partial hospitalization treatment program.

After conducting an extensive literature review, the authors developed, refined, and tested a group therapy assessment tool for use in both music therapy and traditional therapy, measuring nine items: attention to task (physical and verbal), eye contact, pro-social skills (physical and verbal), empathy (physical and verbal), and managing negative affect (physical and verbal). Six participants with a mean age of 9.5 (SD = 1.85) years were randomly selected to test the group therapy assessment tool from a pool of 60 eligible children receiving group partial hospitalization therapy. Participants were scored by three raters across two partial hospitalization therapy groups for inter-rater reliability. Content and construct validity were also examined.

Intraclass Coefficients (ICC) averaged 0.994 across all nine items indicating excellent inter-rater reliability. Content and construct validity was established and the instrument demonstrated good external validity potential.

The Beech Brook Therapy Assessment Instrument has demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability in measuring important behaviors of functioning central in the treatment of youth with severe and emotional disturbances. The measure has potential for wide utility and application in practice and research; however, future studies are needed to establish external validity.