Introducing the Association of Psychology Training Clinics' Collaborative Research Network: A Study on Client Expectancies

A nationwide collaborative research network has been developed by the Association of Psychology Training Clinics (APTC) to carry out research with the potential to improve services provided in training clinic settings. Six APTC member clinics participated in this inaugural study. In addition to demonstrating that the APTC research network can recruit clients for participation in multisite research and randomize enrolled participants to conditions effectively across the network, findings from this study also contribute to our growing understanding of the problem of premature termination within psychology training clinics. More specifically, the results confirm earlier single-site reports in the literature that a high rate of premature termination is a common problem within psychology training clinics (multisite M = 69.4%) and that the most typical client outcome at the end of treatment is no reliable change in symptomatic distress. Findings indicate that clients' pretreatment expectations of treatment duration are positively correlated with the number of treatment sessions subsequently attended and are predictive of clients' symptom severity at termination. However, expectancy education was not associated with a reduction in premature termination. Notably, there is a positive correlation between prior treatment exposure and current, prospective treatment expectations. Implications for training and policy are discussed with future directions for research suggested.