Session depth and smoothness in relation to the concept of engagement in counseling.

Investigated the relation of client-counselor evaluation of initial interview to client return for another session. At the end of the initial session, 5 professionals, 5 practicum trainees, and their 290 college-student clients completed the depth and smoothness indexes of the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (Stiles, 1980). Clients also completed the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (Larsen, Attkisson, Hargreaves, deeper interviews, as rated by both client and counselor; and greater client satisfaction, disturbance, and motivation. The results are discussed in relation to the concept that the initial session represents an engagement session when clients return for more sessions. During the summer of 1984, while evaluating the experience of practicum trainees during the previous academic year, I formulated a concept that was later termed engagement. Examining numbers of clients and sessions for each practicum student, I discovered that practicum students with more positive supervisory evaluations saw their clients for more sessions than did trainees with less positive evaluations. After further numerical calculation, I found that these trainees could be differentiated by the percentage of clients returning to counseling for a second session. At the center where these calculations were made, there is no screening procedure for clients, who are assigned to counselors (both professionals and trainees) on the basis of mutual free time. The counselor who conducts the initial interview handles all subsequent counseling for the client. Sometimes the center's professionals have clients referred specifically to them. These clients are not included when the center staff examines the percentages of clients who return for a second interview. Professionals generally have a higher client-return rate than do trainees.