Interjudge reliability and agreement about the patient's central issue in Time-Limited Psychotherapy (TLP) and its relation to TLP outcome

This study addresses three questions related to the central issue (CI) in T ime Limited Psychotherapy (TLP): (a) Will different therapists formulate th e same or similar CI for a given patient? (b) Will therapists agree on the accuracy of the CI suggested to the patient? (c) Is there a relationship be tween therapists' agreement on the CI and outcome of treatment? Fifteen tra nscripts of evaluation sessions for TLP were given to 15 TLP therapists. Ea ch case was read by three therapists, who were asked to formulate a CI for each patient. In the second phase of the study, therapists had to employ a rating scale assessing the accuracy of several CI's to a given patient. A p ossible relationship between accuracy and therapy outcome was checked as we ll, based on patient outcome measures available from a previous study. The CI's formulated by the therapists were different. When the accuracy rating scale was employed, interjudge reliabilities ranged from R = .46 to R = .85 for 12 of fifteen cases. Interrater agreement about accuracy of the CI was greater than expected by chance for 10 of the 15 cases. A positive relatio nship was found between agreement and three outcome measures.