The challenges of challenging: Development and validation of the Barriers to Challenging Scale

Although therapist challenges can be useful to help clients break through defenses and gain awareness about maladaptive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, many therapists are hesitant to use them (Hill, 2020). To be able to assess such hesitance, we conducted two studies to develop the Barriers to Challenging Scale (BCS) and assess its psychometric properties and relations with related constructs. In Study 1, 286 therapists, therapists-in-training, and undergraduate helping skills students completed the 34-item pilot measure. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of the final 15-item BCS: client reactions, negative beliefs, and lack of skills. Acceptable test-retest reliability and high internal consistency were found for all scales. The BCS was negatively correlated with self-efficacy for using challenges and positively correlated with barriers to using immediacy and conflict-avoidant communication style, supporting its validity. In Study 2, 358 therapists, therapists-in-training, and undergraduate helping skills students completed the 15-item BCS. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the stability of the BCS's multidimensional three-factor structure; high internal consistency was found for all scales. Measure invariance tests indicated that undergraduate and graduate students and practicing therapists interpreted items similarly. The BCS was positively correlated with attachment anxiety, further supporting its validity. Participants scored higher on the BCS subscales compared to parallel subscales on a measure of barriers to using immediacy, indicating that therapists perceive more barriers to using challenges than to using immediacy. Limitations and implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).