DIMENSIONS OF CLIENTS INITIAL PRESENTATION OF PROBLEMS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY - THE EARLY ASSIMILATION RESEARCH SCALE

We report the development of the Early Assimilation Research Scale (EA RS), a measure of clients' presentation of their problems during the f irst 20 minutes of their first psychotherapy session. Using an iterati ve group-based process in which we cycled between listening to first-s ession tape recordings and discussing our understandings, we identifie d the following dimensions of clients' presentations: specificity, int ernality, in-session distress, reported distress, richness of understa nding, and openness of the negotiation. An application of the EARS to data from a large comparative psychotherapy research project yielded a cceptable interrater reliability and preliminary but promising evidenc e of construct validity, based on correlations of EARS scales with mea sures of symptom intensity at intake and impact of the first session.