The micro-process rating system for psychotherapeutic interventions - CBT (RPI-CBT): development and validation.

OBJECTIVE

Psychotherapy process research examines what happens within therapy sessions to clarify how therapeutic change unfolds, a scope expanded through modern observational methods. Building on this development, the rating system systematically identifies cognitive-behavioral interventions at the micro-process level, including their duration, and frequency.

METHOD: To determine the most precise rating interval, 67 videos from the first 24 sessions of n = 3 patients were analyzed using ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc tests to examine differences between three rating intervals. Additionally, 171 videos from 26 additional patients were used to calculate Kendall's W to assess the inter-rater reliability. Descriptive analyses were conducted to illustrate which interventions were captured and how they could be differentiated.

RESULTS

The two-minute interval showed no loss of interventions compared to the one-minute interval and was therefore used for subsequent analyses. Inter-rater reliability reached excellent values for both scales (W = .906; W = .836), although values varied across interventions (W = .502 - .932; W = .499 - .892). Primarily, interventions from early therapeutic phases were identified and clearly distinguishable from one another.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the RPI-CBT emerged as a reliable rating system capable of identifying and differentiating cognitive-behavioral interventions, although not all interventions were captured.