PSYCHOTHERAPY ENGAGERS VERSUS NON-ENGAGERS

(1991); and Tryon (2003). At the end of this section, I summarize the relevant findings
and limitations of this literature.
Hill (1978) examined helping skills used over thirds of intake sessions.
Counselors were six PhD counseling psychologists (3 male, 3 female) with 1 to 11 years
of full-time postdoctoral experience; their theoretical orientations were as follows: two
were mostly phenomenological, one was mostly gestalt, one was mostly psychoanalytic,
and two were combinations of phenomenological, gestalt, and psychoanalytic
orientations. Clients were 12 university students (6 male, 6 female). Three judges (one
female PhD counseling psychologist, two female undergraduate psychology majors)
categorized the therapist verbal responses for this study. Each counselor conducted an
intake session with one male and one female. No sharp distinction existed between
intake interviewing and counseling at the counseling center, although the emphasis in
intake was on a better understanding of the problem and the formulation of a treatment
plan. The length of the sessions ranged from 16 to 66 minutes (M = 40:30, SD = 15:48).
Judges were trained until they unanimously agreed on 80% of the categorizations. Each
session was divided into thirds based on duration of the session. Counselor verbal
activity (i.e. how much a counselor talks in comparison to the client) was examined by
comparing the number of counselor response units per third of each session to the number
of client response units. Arc sine transformations were done on all counselor verbal
activity scores and helping skills percentages prior to analyses to correct for skewing of
the data with proportion scores.
Results of Hill (1978) indicated that the mean percentage of counselor verbal
activity per thirds were 36.92% (SD = 12.19), 39.83% (SD = 5.52), and 55.25% (SD =
52