The Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI). Description, development, and reliability studies

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Psychotherapy Research
• Clinical Assessment Tools

Background:

• Assessing child's play activity in psychotherapy is crucial for understanding therapeutic processes.
• Existing instruments may lack comprehensive measures for play dynamics.
• The development of reliable assessment tools is essential for advancing child psychotherapy research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and reliability of the Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI).
• To evaluate the CPTI's potential as a reliable measure of child's play activity in individual psychotherapy.

Main Methods:

• The CPTI was developed to examine child's play activity during psychotherapy sessions.
• Three independent raters assessed eight videotaped play therapy sessions using the CPTI.
• Interrater reliability was calculated using intraclass correlation coefficients and kappa statistics.

Main Results:

• Good to excellent interrater reliability was achieved for ordinal categories of the CPTI (intraclass correlation coefficients).
• Acceptable to excellent interrater reliability was found for nominal categories of the CPTI (kappa levels).
• The CPTI demonstrated promising reliability in measuring play activity.

Conclusions:

• The Children's Play Therapy Instrument (CPTI) is a reliable tool for assessing play activity in child psychotherapy.
• Further research is recommended to establish the CPTI's discriminant validity for diagnostic and outcome measures.
• The CPTI has the potential to be a valuable instrument in child psychotherapy research and clinical practice.