Confirming, Validating, and Norming the Factor Structure of Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change Initial and...

Area of Science:

• Psychotherapy research
• Clinical psychology
• Treatment outcome measurement

Background:

• Feedback research complements manualized treatments by empirically grounding psychotherapy.
• Existing feedback systems show improved outcomes in individual and couple therapy.
• The Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change (STIC) is a novel client-report feedback system for various therapy types.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesized factor structure of the STIC's six scales.
• To assess the STIC's concurrent validity and reliability.
• To derive clinical cut-offs for STIC scales and subscales.

Main Methods:

• The study utilized a clinical outpatient sample and a normal, representative U.S. sample.
• Factorial structure was tested for both STIC Initial and STIC Intersession forms.
• Concurrent validity, scale reliabilities (Omega hierarchical), and subscale reliabilities (alpha, rate-rerate) were evaluated.

Main Results:

• The hypothesized factor structure of the STIC's six scales was supported.
• The STIC's 6 scales and 40/41 subscales successfully differentiated clinical and normal samples.
• Reliabilities for scales and most subscales were supported, along with derived clinical cut-offs.

Conclusions:

• The STIC demonstrates strong factorial and concurrent validity.
• The STIC is a reliable instrument for assessing and tracking client change across therapy modalities.
• The findings support the STIC's utility in clinical practice and future research.