The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of social worker and allied professional’s professional quality of life, particularly the impact of the professional’s childhood psychological abuse on compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction scores. Variables such as perceived resilience, social support, childhood psychological abuse, evidence-based practice training, years of experience, percentage of clients with trauma narratives, and case-load number are explored both conceptually and as risk or protective factors to social worker and allied professional’s compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction. A conceptual model is provided to visually show the direction of the proposed research. The sample to be used in this research consists of two-hundred-eighteen social worker and allied professionals in the United States who predominantly have a master’s degree or higher. A simple correlation analysis will be used to see any direct correlations between variables used in this study: childhood psychological abuse and its three components, compassion satisfaction, burnout, compassion fatigue, perceived resilience, social support and its three components, evidence-based training, education level, caseload, percentage of client trauma, and years of experience in the field. Multiple regression analysis will also be utilized in this research study to identify any relationship between the aforementioned variables and compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue. In focusing on the research question for this study, an examination of the simple correlational matrix found, for this sample of MSW social workers and allied professionals, no significant correlation between childhood psychological abuse and compassion fatigue or compassion satisfaction. Additionally, in running two separate regression models, one for predicting compassion fatigue and one for predicting compassion satisfaction, childhood psychological abuse was not a significant predictor for this sample’s study. Findings from this study disagree with the only study that attempts to measure childhood psychological abuse of the social worker and their reaction to secondary traumatic stress (Nelson-Gardell & Harris, 2004). There are two main differences between the two study samples: education, training level, and work experience, perhaps suggesting that social workers who are master’s level educated or higher are better protected from compassion fatigue related symptomology, or that the Nelson-Gardell & Harris study’s predominantly child welfare worker sample is encountering client trauma in a way that is unique from this study’s sample. Implications from this study’s findings are explored suggesting further research into the effects of education and evidence-based training as a protective factor from the effects of childhood psychological abuse on compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction.

The therapeutic alliance is an empirically-supported element of successful psychotherapy. However, the degree to which training programs incorporate alliance-centered components into their curricula and clinical practica remains unclear. The aims of this study were to (a) examine training programs’ awareness of alliance research; (b) determine the extent to which programs incorporate formal, evidence-based alliance training into their pedagogy; (c) determine whether there are differences in evidence-based alliance training practices between programs with different foci/terminal degrees and programs with different training models; and (d) cultivate an understanding of what training programs would consider ideal alliance training practices and the barriers that may interfere with them. Data derived from a quantitative survey of directors (or their designates) of APA-accredited clinical and counseling doctoral programs in the United States and Canada and a follow-up qualitative survey that examined participant reactions to the initial survey results. Generally, respondents indicated that their programs were aware of alliance research trends. However, respondents also largely indicated they do not incorporate systematic, evidence-based alliance training into their programs despite believing that such systematic elements would contribute to ideal alliance training practices. There were no statistically significant differences between graduate program degree type and training model in terms of awareness of alliance research or current alliance training practices. However, differences in views on gold-standard training emerged for training model; practitioner-scholar programs endorsed greater preferences for systematic alliance training relative to clinical scientist and scientist-practitioner programs. Qualitative responses to the findings provide additional context, and implications for training and future research directions are discussed.

Empirically supported treatments (ESTs) now exist for a variety of psychological disorders; however, few individuals have access to these treatments and even fewer receive them in well delivered form. This has been termed the research-practice gap. It is likely that a combination of factors contribute to individuals not receiving good quality ESTs. One major reason is the limited availability of effective training in these treatments. Although many therapists wish to learn such treatments, they seldom have the opportunity as training relies on scarce expert resources and is costly. Furthermore, relatively little is known about the effectiveness of this method or how best to train clinicians: despite having evidence-based treatments, there are no evidence-based trainings. This dissertation examined one example of an EST - enhanced cognitive behavior therapy for eating disorders (CBT-E) - with the overarching aim of evaluating both existing, and commonly accepted, training methods, as well as, newly developed more scalable ones. How best to train clinicians in CBT for eating disorders has not been investigated previously. The Kirkpatrick training evaluation framework was adopted to guide the studies. Chapter One provided an overview of the research-practice gap with a particular emphasis on the obstacles faced in training therapists. Chapter Two reviewed the literature on training in ESTs and highlighted gaps in the research evidence and areas for improvement in future studies. An important conclusion was that, although studies varied in design and the precise form and content of the training investigated, results were mostly consistent in indicating that knowledge and skills tended to improve following training. However, the outcome measures used to assess training were often poorly described with unknown psychometric properties. Perhaps most importantly the lack of clearly defined competence cut-points made interpretation difficult. In addition, much of the training investigated had limitations in terms of scalability. Chapters Three, Four and Five, aimed to overcome some of these difficulties and provided a series of studies investigating training in CBT-E. Chapter Three employed qualitative methods to investigate trainees' reaction to conventional workshop and more scalable web-based training and found that although trainees enjoyed training, they had a variety of reasons for not planning to implement the treatment as learned. Chapters Four and Five evaluated the impact of different forms of training on knowledge and skill acquisition respectively. Training in CBT-E was associated with increases in knowledge especially when paired with supervision or scalable guidance, which proved feasible and acceptable to clinician trainees. The results for skill acquisition were less clear, but the new scalable online training was associated with therapists achieving competence. Finally Chapter Six discussed the broader implications of the work and highlighted areas for future research.