Counseling processes from the viewpoint of the client - Multidimensional construct of process involvement as basis for development of a client questionnaire

The aim of this study is twofold: First we intended to go some steps beyond the well-known constructs of 'self- relatedness' and its german counterpar t 'Aufnahmebereitschaft'. For doing these steps, it seemed necessary to con cretize some of the client's cognitive, affective, and interactional featur es producing and indicating therapeutic change. By this way the construct o f, 'change involvement' was shaped. Second, we intended to do some prelimin ary work on the operationalization of this construct by means of developing a client feedback sheet. Its items were used to obtain processual feedback from counseling sessions which clients had categorized as more or less use ful. Video tapes of the sessions were shown to the clients and stopped ever y two minutes. Clients encoded all the micro-sequences (method of video-sti mulated recall). A factor analysis of the 20 items was based on the resulti ng evaluation dynamics and led to a 4 factor solution. Different patterns o f factor evolution characterized useful and non-useful counseling sessions.