A literature review on the potential of computer-mediated communication
(CMC) as a medium for conducting psychotherapy via the Internet revealed that CMC
may mediate interpersonally rich interactions if participants are allowed sufficient time
and repeated opportunities (anticipate future communications) to exchange information
and build relationships. To examine the extent to which the process of online therapy
resembles face-to-face therapy, online therapy transcripts were examined through a
molecular approach and the results were compared to the extant, psychotherapy
processes literature.
The participants were six dyads formed by college graduate students enrolled in a
clinical practicum course and their online adolescent clients. The clients were highschool
freshmen and sophomores referred by their school counselors through the Gulf
Coast GEAR UP Partnership Project. Trained undergraduate psychology majors coded
therapist and client online behavior according to two well established and validated
coding methods, the Helping Skills System (HSS) and the Client Behavior System
(CBS; Hill & O’Brien, 1999). Although levels of client overall output (grammatical units) remained fairly constant throughout the course of therapy, the ratio of productive
to non-productive output per session increased as a function of number of sessions.
Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) methodology, the results revealed that
therapist facilitating skills (approval and reassurance, restatements and rephrasing, and
reflection of feelings) predicted higher client productive output, whereas interpretations
and informative statements predicted lower client productive output. The results
confirmed that online therapy can lead to productive therapist-client interactions and that
the associations between these interactions are similar to the associations found in faceto-
face therapy interactions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2915 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Cepeda, Lisa Marie |
| Contributors | Brossart, Dan F., Conoley, Collie W. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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