Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Purpose: The Narrative-Emotion Process Coding System (NEPCS) is a standardized tool to identify minute-by-minute observable client behaviours (e.g., statements, facial expressions, silence) that correspond to specific narrative and emotion processes in videotaped psychotherapy sessions. The NEPCS is developed on the idea that facilitating client narrative and emotion integration is essential for successful psychotherapy treatment. The NEPCS has eight major narrative-emotion markers which are divided into the problem markers (e.g., empty story, abstract story) and the change markers (e.g., unexpected outcome story, discovery story) subgroup. Although the NEPCS has established a significantly higher proportion of change markers in recovered clients' sessions (in depression and trauma treatment), no research has investigated the relationship between clients' first person accounts of therapy change and findings emerging from the analysis of therapy session videotapes. I propose to test the psychometric validity of the NEPCS by investigating the degree to which NEPCS change markers identified in clients' post treatment interviews are consistent with change markers evidenced in their videotaped respective late-stage therapy sessions. Method: I will select 5 recovered and 5 unchanged clients from a recent study in which clients with severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) received either Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) or Motivational Interviewing (MI) prior to CBT. I will interview them at therapy termination using a semi-structured interview protocol to inquire about significant changes in therapy. Next, I and two other trained coders will apply the NEPCS to these videotaped client interviews and their corresponding two late-stage therapy sessions. Research questions and analyses: Do the type and frequencies of NEPCS change markers differ in clients' posttreatment interviews and their corresponding therapy sessions (1) for the recovered versus unchanged group? and (2) for the CBT and MI-CBT group? Implications: Providing psychometric validity for the NEPCS will significantly enhance our understanding of how narrative-emotion processes contribute to effective psychotherapy for the development of innovative treatment interventions and clinically-informative therapy session measures.