UTILITY OF THERAPIST SESSION CHECKLISTS TO MONITOR DELIVERY OF COPINGSKILLS TREATMENT FOR COCAINE ABUSERS

Manual-based psychotherapy process rating systems, such as the Collabo rative Study Psychotherapy Rating Scale (CSPRS), are a valuable method of assessing treatment integrity and discriminability. However, becau se the rating systems are time consuming and labor intensive, only lim ited samples of sessions are typically rated. In this report, we provi de preliminary data on the utility of therapist self-report session ch ecklists, modeled on the CSPRS system, as a strategy for monitoring de livery of manual-specified interventions. The poor levels of concordan ce between therapist and observer ratings suggest that therapist sessi on reports may be a supplement to, but not substitute for, observer ra tings. Recommendations are made for improving therapist accuracy of re porting on the interventions they deliver. If improvements to the ther apist checklist system are validated in future research, this method m ay have several applications in psychotherapy process research.