Effect of Rater Orientation on the Evaluation of Therapeutic Alliance

Alliance ratings from psychodynamic coders were compared with those of cognitive-behavioral coders on the same data set of significant psychodynamic-interpersonal (n = 13) and cognitive-behavior therapy sessions (n = 18). Results indicate a high correspondence between the ratings of the two sets of coders. The psychodynamic coders, however, rated both therapy conditions significantly lower than the cognitive-behavioral coders. Unlike cognitive-behavioral coders, psychodynamic coders did not rate cognitive-behavior sessions significantly higher than psychodynamic-interpersonal sessions. Implications for research are discussed.