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Abstract

To determine whether or not goal setting could be a sensitive measure of outcome clients set specific behavioral goals on the Behavioral Target Complaints Form and then evaluated their progress after seven 1-hr. sessions of psychotherapy. The sample consisted of 20 university and community clients treated with brief therapy by seven advanced graduate students and one faculty member. The 10 clients who set goals did not show greater improvement than the 10 who did not set goals on either of two other measures of outcome, the Personal Satisfaction Form (Nichols, 1975) and the Adult State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1970). However, the Behavioral Target Complaints Form was significantly correlated with the other outcome measures. The findings were interpreted as demonstrating that this goal-attainment measure is a sensitive measure of outcome but that administering it does not affect outcome of therapy.

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The Behavioral Target Complaints Form: A Nonreactive Measure of Psychotherapeutic Outcome

Abstract

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