Tracking change in group interventions: a further adaptation of the Innovative Moments Coding System for Groups

Abstract

Introduction. In group psychotherapy research, there are few reliable measures for tracking members’ change. This study proposes a further adaptation of the Innovative Moment Coding System for Groups (IMCS-G), a reliable method previously developed in one format of group intervention for detecting innovative moments (IMs). IMs are exceptions to the clients’ problematic narratives, organized in different levels of complexity in terms of meaning elaboration (Level 1, 2, and 3). IMCS-G consists of 7 categories (Self-Directed, Other-Directed, Explicit Mirroring, Interaction 1, Interaction 2, Collective, Voice of Group) organized in two macro-categories: Individual (e.g., change was narrated by a single participant) and Group IMs (e.g., change was co-constructed by more than one participant). Methods. Two reliable coders applied the IMCS-G to analyze the transcripts of nine sessions of a counseling group addressed to underachieving university students (N=10) and eight sessions of a brief group psychotherapy targeted to substance abusers (N=8). Agreement and reliability for IMCS-G categories and their Levels were calculated. Results. Consistently with previous studies, a strong agreement and reliability for IMCS-G categories and Levels were found in both group interventions. Furthermore, despite some differences in the frequency of IMCS-G categories and Levels, in both interventions, there was a higher frequency of Self-Directed IMs, a lower frequency of the Explicit Mirroring IMs, and a higher frequency of Level 3 Group IMs. Discussion. This study confirmed the reliability of IMCS-G in different group formats, but it also suggested rooms of improvement for some IMCS-G categories.

Reliability of the innovative moments coding system for groups and the association between markers of change and outcomes.

“…The IMCS-G was developed through both theory-and data-driven approaches (Esposito et al, 2022(Esposito et al, , 2023. Indeed, the adapted schemes provided the initial criteria for the coding.…”

“…The IMCS-G (Esposito et al, 2022(Esposito et al, , 2023 was used to track markers of group change during the clinical exchange (see Table 1).…”

“…ESPOSITO, CUTOLO, PASSEGGIA, OLIVEIRA, AND GONÇALVES as we will explain in the next paragraph, in the IMCS-G, the categories are hypothesized as hierarchically organized in terms of their complexity (Esposito et al, 2022(Esposito et al, , 2023.…”

“…The IMCS-G was initially developed in the context of counseling groups (the Narrative Mediation Path; Freda et al, 2016, see after) for underachieving university students (Esposito et al, 2023), but it can be used to rate session transcripts in other types of group interventions (Esposito et al, 2022). The IMCS-G is a coding system that allows for tracking markers of group change during the therapeutic process Based on the previous studies (Esposito et al, 2022(Esposito et al, , 2023, we hypothesized that these IM categories are hierarchically organized in terms of group members involvement in meaning construction (see Figure 1). Specifically, selfdirected IMs may constitute the basis of narrative change in group interventions (Esposito et al, 2022); indeed, this category is generally the most common and could be considered the foundation for interactive and group narrative change.…”

“…The IMCS-G is a coding system that allows for tracking markers of group change during the therapeutic process Based on the previous studies (Esposito et al, 2022(Esposito et al, , 2023, we hypothesized that these IM categories are hierarchically organized in terms of group members involvement in meaning construction (see Figure 1). Specifically, selfdirected IMs may constitute the basis of narrative change in group interventions (Esposito et al, 2022); indeed, this category is generally the most common and could be considered the foundation for interactive and group narrative change. Moreover, group IMs comprise individual IMs.…”