The development of the Child Psychotherapy Process Scales (CPPS)

This article presents the development of a new measure to describe and evaluate the process of child psychotherapy. Consisting of 15 child and 18 therapist items in five-point Likert-type format, the Child Psychotherapy Process Scales (CPPS) were modeled after widely used adult process scales. Three raters reliably scored 105 twenty-minute segments of child psychotherapy using the 33 items. Principal component analyses revealed three child factors (therapeutic relationship, child therapeutic work, and child readiness) and three therapist factors (therapist technical work, therapeutic relationship, and technical lapse) which described both positive and negative aspects of the therapy process. Confirmatory P-technique analyses revealed that the structure of therapist and child insession discourse differed significantly across high and low CPPS-scored sessions. Discussion relates CPPS factors to those obtained in the adult literature and to child process factors obtained using clinician and child self-report...