In recent years, psychology researchers have begun to use online methods for participant recruitment and data collection. One of the most popular online methods is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing website. To get a glance of its popularity, we recently did a Google Scholar search using the keyword “Mechanical Turk” (see Figure 1 […]
While an impressive amount of knowledge has been gathered so far from psychotherapy process and outcome research (see Lambert, 2013), there are still many unanswered questions and areas of needed additional attention. Some of these remaining questions focus on clarifying currently unanswered debates in the field; others represent ways to improve current outcomes; and some […]
The quality of the therapeutic alliance is a robust predictor of psychotherapy outcomes (Horvath, Del Re, Flückinger, & Symonds, 2011). Recent studies have shown that some therapists are consistently better at developing and maintaining alliances with their patients than others (Baldwin, Wampold, & Imel, 2007; Dinger, Strack, Leichsenring, Wilmers, & Schauenburg, 2008; Zuroff, Kelly, Leybman, […]
Over the past decade, the practice of mindfulness has received a significant amount of attention in the psychotherapy research literature. The existing research on mindfulness has demonstrated that it can produce positive health and mental health benefits for psychotherapy clients (Davis & Hayes, 2011). A smaller body of research has also demonstrated that the practice […]
Decades of psychotherapy outcome research and countless meta-analyses show that psychotherapy works. Unfortunately, psychotherapy is a luxury afforded to few. Only a minority of people with mental illness receive treatment (Kessler et al., 2005), due to both attitudinal barriers (e.g., stigma, desire for self-reliance) and structural barriers (e.g., cost, provider availability; Mojtabai et al., 2011). […]
Throughout 2017, the Psychotherapy Research Committee and the Scholarship Domain have been providing Psychotherapy Bulletin articles with recommendations for sharing our research with others. In the first Bulletin issue of the year, we included suggestions for sharing our research with policy makers. In the second issue, we focused on sharing our research with psychotherapy clients. […]
The past 100 years of psychotherapy research has sought not only to examine the efficacy and effectiveness of psychotherapy, but also to identify the causal mechanisms and processes underlying therapeutic change (Lambert, 2013; Wampold & Imel, 2015). The existing research on psychotherapy processes has provided us with a rich understanding of several variables that are […]
Premature termination is a pervasive problem in psychotherapy (Garfield, 1994) and campus mental health services are especially vulnerable to increased rates of this problem. Although client expectations have consistently been associated with premature termination (e.g., Callahan et al., 2009; Dew & Bickman, 2005; Reis & Brown, 2006), the role of therapist expectations is still not […]
Science advocacy is a topic that typically does not garner much attention—or excitement—for us as psychologists. Additionally, as psychologists we usually have many other things at the top of our to-do lists, including research, clinical work, supervision, teaching, or writing. Science advocacy rarely figures on that list. At the same time, if national decision makers […]