Symptom Improvement and Length of Treatment in Ethnically Similar and Dissimilar Client-Therapist Pairings

This study examined the length of treatment and degree of symptom improvement of African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian clients as a function of therapist ethnicity using data obtained from 42 university and college counseling centers over a 2-year period. When analyses were collapsed across client-therapist ethnicity combinations, ethnic similarity was associated with a slightly longer duration of treatment. However, when a random deletion procedure was used to render the number of dyads within each ethnic group approximately equal, this effect was no longer obtained. When the ethnic groups were examined separately, there was a nonsignificant trend whereby Hispanic clients stayed in treatment slightly longer when paired with Caucasian versus Hispanic therapists.