Investigating Therapist Preferences For Client Characteristics Using a Paired Comparison Methodology

Abstract

Very few studies have been conducted on therapist preferences for client characteristics. The purpose of the current study was to address this omission in the literature, specifically by examining the preferences of therapists-in-training for client characteristics. One hundred thirty-two graduate students in counseling psychology served as participants in a web-based study, completing demographics information as well as a 120 item forced-choice measure. The BTL model, a powerful statistical procedure for analyzing paired comparison data was utilized. Psychologically minded was found to be the most preferred client characteristic among a possible 16 characteristics. No results were found for differences in preferences based on gender, race, clinical experience, socioeconomic status (SES), sexual orientation, or theoretical orientation. Limitations of this study as well as implications for practice, theory, training, and research are discussed.