Content Analysis of Social Phobics’ Discourse in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Abstract

The present study utilized an empirically derived coding system to identify content categories in the spontaneous verbalizations of social phobics in the context of a short-term cognitive-behavioral group therapy. The coding system was applied successfully to segments of transcriptions of eleven group sessions. Evaluation of changes in the content categories utilized by two subjects over the course of the life of the group indicates the usefulness of this coding system in identifying meaningful shifts in cognitive processes during treatment.

The Modified Cognitive Constructions Coding System: Reliability and Validity Assessments

“…The ability to code problem constructions and causes reliably and validly at the level of speech turn allows for the examination of how clients' constructions change subtly from moment to moment over the course of therapy, the link between particular therapist interventions and such changes in clients' problem constructions, and the association between changes in client problem constructions, other in-process change events, and treatment outcome. Understanding the link between in-session process and treatment outcome is essential for developing increasingly effective treatments and is, therefore, a primary goal of psychotherapy research (Alexander, Newell, Robbins & Turner, 1995;Biran, Simons & Stiles, 2002;Rice & Greenberg, 1984). One particularly important finding was that we could reliably and validly code blame to other.…”