Psychotherapy Collaboration Survey

The aim of this survey is to collect data on naturalistic psychotherapy in European countries, increasing cooperation between SPR members, and possibly, in the long-term, initiating a data collection consortium.

More and more, psychotherapy research demands large patient sample sizes drawn from naturalistic settings, which are difficult to collect without adequate funding. Our aspirational goal is to build a network of research clinics/units across Europe in order to create large-scale naturalistic data sets and projects, as well as to make it possible for students across different research sites to collaborate on naturalistic data analysis. We also hope that this would allow new psychotherapy research topics to emerge and result in increased pressure on policy makers to make psychotherapy more accessible across Europe.

We are aware that initiating and developing an SPR consortium is a considerable challenge, with many obstacles to overcome. However, we also think that in many respects it could be a game changer for psychotherapy research, for SPR, and for the individual researchers involved in the consortium. For example, besides contributing to data collection, it may provide advantages in enabling access (to be regulated in the future) to more meaningful data. Here “meaningful” refers not only to the dimension of the samples, but also to the wider representation of countries and cultures. We already have a small group of people realistically (in that they are aware of the constrains) enthusiastic about this project, and we would like to invite more colleagues to join us on this journey.

At this early stage we are just trying to ask for information about your data collection in clinical practice.

The questions below refer to clinics that collect naturalistic data as part of routine psychotherapy. This data may be used for research, supervision and/or quality control of the services. Also, if you are not currently collecting data, but are planning do it in the near future, please fill in the questions having in mind what your plans are at this moment in time.

It’s important to note that the information we are requesting in this survey will be treated in confidence and should be seen, at this stage, as an expression of interest. Once we have collated information from this survey, we will then discuss and with all potential contributor the best way of moving forward. So, this survey is just the first step.

Thank you very much for your cooperation.

1. Please insert the country and the city in which this service is based

2. Please insert your name, position in the clinic and contact

3. This service is

4. This service is (multiple answers are possible)

5. What treatment options does the service offer? (Please mark all options that apply)

6. Please insert some information on the models of therapy used (e.g., CBT, psychodynamic)

7. Please insert some information on the type of therapy offered (e.g., individual, couples, families, groups)

8. Please insert some information on the patients that are treated (e.g., adults, children; main diagnoses)

9. Please estimate the number of patients on average per year enrolling in treatment

10. Please estimate the number of therapists working in your clinic per year

11. Please estimate the number of sessions patients receive on average and range

12. Which pre-post measures are used?

Please mention all the outcome instruments you use in your clinic and identify the main one

13. Which outcome measures are used in each session

Please mention all the outcome instruments you use in your setting

14. Please specify if other outcome measures are used in regular intervals, indicating the interval and the measures.

15. Please specify if process measures are used in regular intervals, indicating the interval and the measures.

16. Is there any feedback system (or routine outcome monitoring) operating in the clinic?

If yes, specify which:

17. Would you (as a person or as a team) be interested to participate in the establishment of a research collaboration and/or exchange (e.g., student) program regarding naturalistic data assessment?

18. Notwithstanding all the complexities involved (e.g., legal, technological, authorship), would you consider the possibility of enrolling into a consortium that aggregates naturalistic data from different countries?

If yes (you can select more than one option):

What are the different forms of collaboration?
Currently there are three different ways of collaborating, briefly described below. Other questions can be addressed to
Miguel Gonçalves: mgoncalves@psi.uminho.pt
or
Wolfgang Lutz: lutzw@uni-trier.de

1. Crosswalks (converting raw scores to common metrics) with analyses of the questionnaires, but also the possibility of studying other issues, such as general effectiveness, therapists’ variability, etc. This opens possibility of joint publication in the future.
The main idea here is to share raw and anonymized data that can be used to develop common metrics between the different instruments. Also, other topics may be in the near future developed with the involvement of all the members who contributed with data.
I would like to participate in this line of research
2. Adding a new item to ongoing data collection of members of the consortium – i.e. “How well do you feel you are getting along emotionally and psychologically?” (originally proposed by Ken Howard). This single item has strong correlations with a diversity of measures (see Lutz, De Jong, Rubel & Delgadillo, 2021) and its inclusion would allow different samples with different instruments to have at least a common measure. Moreover, this single item has two formulations, and response structures (a Likert scale and an analogous scale) and one interesting aim would be to study which formulation and response structure has better parameters to estimate change in psychotherapy.
I would like to participate in this line of research
3. Recommendations and suggestions for colleagues starting routine data collection. This involves support on frequently used measures, technique, implementation issues. For clinics starting data collection, this would be a way of study the possibility of using some similar measures (as well as the single item, perhaps).
I would like to participate in this line of research