Research at the OSU Couple and Family Therapy Clinic
Being part of research-intensive university means that the faculty and students in the OSU Couple and Family Therapy program are involved in research. Some of that research is conducted here at the OSU Couple and Family Therapy Clinic. The purpose of this research is two-fold.
1) First and foremost, it is to help us understand how effective we are in serving our clients.
2) The second purpose is to make contributions to the Couple and Family Therapy literature about effectiveness and what ingredients make for successful treatment.
There have been several data collection projects at the clinic that have been conducted over the last 20 years or more. The best news from these projects is that the clients who seek our services tend to feel better as they attend their sessions. What is most important to remember about research is that no one study can be used to prove anything. We need multiple studies to provide support for findings, so that is why we continue to collect data in the clinic, asking different questions and developing different ideas that can be used to support Couple and Family Therapy as a discipline and as a way to treat the problems for which clients seek services.
Current Clinic Research Projects
Below you will find a description of the current research projects that are taking place at the clinic. If you are a new or current client you may have the opportunity to participate in these studies.
Cultural Humility Study
The purpose of this study is to better understand the connection between therapists’ cultural humility and therapy outcomes. This clinic and others across the country are involved in this study. If you are a client at this clinic, and are over the age of 18, we want to hear about your experience.
How to Participate?
We have a brief survey for you that you can complete on your own time. The survey should only take a few minutes to complete. All of your answers will be kept confidential – none will be shared in any way with your current therapist.
Upon completion, you will have the opportunity to enter your name into a raffle for a $50 Amazon gift card which will be distributed to one of the clinicians at your participating location.
If you have any questions, please email Riley Whiting, at whiting.95@osu.edu.
Past Clinic Research Projects
Below you will find a summary of some of the research that has been conducted at the clinic. You can click on the link to get access to the paper. We thank all of our current and former clients for their time and willingness to participate in these projects. You have made a difference!
Therapeutic Alliance
The first data collection was about why clients “drop out” of treatment. Sometimes things just don’t work out between therapists and clients and we were interested in what those “things” might be. One of the major “things” is the relationship with the therapist, what we call alliance. That is, therapy is more effective when the clients trust and feel understood by their therapist, and when clients feel like the work they are doing in therapy makes sense to them in terms of helping to resolve the problems they came to therapy to work on. Several papers have provided support for this idea:
Knerr, M. & Bartle-Haring, S. (2010). Differentiation, perceived stress and therapeutic alliance as key factors in early stage couple therapy. Journal of Family Therapy, 32, 94-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6427.2010.00489.x
Knerr, M., Bartle-Haring, S. et al. (2011). The impact of initial factors on therapeutic alliance in individual and couples therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 37, 182-199. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2009.00176.x
Glebova, T., Bartle-Haring, S. et al. (2011). Therapeutic alliance and progress in couple therapy: multiple perspectives. Journal of Family Therapy, 42-65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6427.2010.00503.x
Bartle-Haring, S., Knerr, M. et al. (2012). Trajectories of therapeutic alliance in couple versus individual therapy: Three-level models. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 38, 79-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2011.569635
Yoo, H., Bartle-Haring, S., Gangamma, R. (2016). Predicting premature termination with alliance at session 1 and 3: An exploratory study. Journal of Family Therapy, 38, 5-17. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12031
Trauma and therapy processes
In this project we looked at what client characteristics might contribute to the alliance. We were particularly interested in client trauma. Many people who seek our services have suffered from different types of traumas, and we wanted to be able to develop strong relationships with these clients in the same way we can with clients who do not have these significant traumas. We found that trauma, especially in male members of couples can sometimes make developing an alliance (strong relationship) with couple clients more challenging. These couples (when male partners have experienced trauma) are more likely to drop out of treatment.
VanBergen, A., Blalock, J. et al. (2020). Couples and trauma history: A descriptive overview of interpersonal trauma and clinical outcomes. Contemporary Family Therapy, 42, 335-345. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-020-09548-4
Fayed, C., Bartle-Haring. S. & VanBergen A. (2021). Interpersonal trauma, therapeutic alliance and relationship satisfaction: A dyadic examination. Contemporary Family Therapy, 43 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09606-5
VanBergen, A., Bartle-Haring, S. et al. (2021). Trauma and relationship satisfaction in treatment seeking couples: A dyadic investigation of differentiation as a mediator. Contemporary Family Therapy, 42, 140-153. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09565-x
Changes in Satisfaction in couple therapy
In each of the data collection projects, we have collected data on relationship satisfaction across therapy sessions. Again the good news is that relationship satisfaction increases, for the most part, during treatment. It isn’t, however, linear. That is, some couples show a decrease and then an increase in satisfaction and some don’t show much change at all. It seems that some couples come to treatment with relatively high levels of relationship satisfaction. Given the way we measure satisfaction, it looks like their satisfaction stays stable throughout the therapy process. These couples may be coming into therapy looking for ways to enhance their relationship. Other couples come to treatment with relatively low levels of satisfaction. These couples show an increase in satisfaction across sessions, and then that increase levels off but remains stable. What this is leading us to think about is, first, what do couples want from treatment, and second how might we assess that other than relationship satisfaction.
Bartle-Haring, s. (2022). Change trajectory classes in couple therapy: How much does relationship satisfaction change? Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000239
Progress Monitoring
There is evidence from individual therapy that when therapists monitor the progress of their clients, that clients tend to stay in treatment longer and there are better outcomes. Progress is monitored by assessing the alliance (relationship) with the therapist, the client’s satisfaction with treatment during that particular session, and the client’s perspective of their progress after a particular session. We were curious whether that would make a difference for couple therapy. We have completed one study about this, and our current data collection is testing it in a different way. The previous project showed that progress monitoring did not make a difference in couple treatment.
Bartle-Haring, S. & VanBergen, A. (2021). Progress monitoring with couple clients. Psychotherapy Research, 31, https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2020.1804640
Therapist Characteristics
We are also interested in what it is about therapists that make them more effective. We collect data from the therapists in the clinic and connect that to client outcomes. In one study we found that confidence in the model of therapy that they choose is associated with better outcomes in treatment. In another project we found that that therapist level of differentiation (a personal characteristic) was associated with client’s differentiation and when they “matched” there were better outcomes.
Bartle-Haring, S., Bryant, A. & Whiting, R. (2022). Therapists’ confidence in their theory of change and outcomes. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 48, 1190-1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12593
Bartle-Haring, S., Shannon, S., et al. (2016). Therapist differentiation and couple clients’ perceptions of therapeutic alliance. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 42, 716-730. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12157
