The Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences: Measurement invariance across international datasets and languages

The Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences (C-NIP) is a brief, multidimensional measure of clients' therapy preferences. This study aimed to examine the factor structure and measurement invariance of the C-NIP.

Fifteen datasets (N = 10,088 observations) representing the C-NIP in nine language versions were obtained from authors of psychometric studies. Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

None of the proposed models adequately fit the data. Therefore, a new model was developed that sufficiently fit most of the C-NIP version 1.1 datasets. The new model was invariant up to the strict and means levels across genders, ages, and psychotherapy experience but only up to the metric level across translations.

The C-NIP can be used to compare men and women, people of diverse ages, and people with some vs. no experience with psychotherapy. Lower reliabilities of the C-NIP scales are a limitation.