THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUPERVISORY WORKING ALLIANCE AND SUPERVISEES' CLIENT OUTCOMES
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Abstract
This study investigated the relationship between supervisory working alliance and clients' outcomes. The purpose of the study was to establish the existence of that relationship. The importance of this study was supported by the limited research on supervision and client outcomes that was available at the time of the study (Ellis & Ladany, 1997; Freitas, 2002; Goodyear & Bernard, 1998; Inman & Ladany, 2008) Additionally, there was limited research in the supervision literature on the topic of the relationship between therapeutic working alliance and supervisory working alliance (Patton & Kivligan, 1997), and no research thus far that explored the relationship between supervisory working alliance and client outcomes, which provided solid support for the need of the current study. Taking into consideration available research that provided evidence of the connection between therapeutic and supervisory working alliances, the researcher made the inference that the supervisory working alliance had a relationship with therapeutic working alliance and, therefore, had a relationship with client outcomes. The researcher recruited participants from three different sources: (a) e-mail lists of counselors who were working under supervision towards their full license from three different states whose licensing boards agreed to provide the researcher with contact information, (b) counselor supervisor lists received from the licensing boards from two of the states, and (c) the list of subscribers to Counselor Education and Supervision Network (CESNET). The study had specific inclusion criteria, which consisted of education and license status of the counselor, standards for supervision requirements, and that counselors had to have at least one adult client who had received a minimum of six therapy sessions and who agreed to participate in the study. Using the inclusion criteria, the final count of the participants consisted of 16 counselor-client pairs. Participant pairs were asked to complete their respective surveys, which consisted of demographic questionnaires for both counselors and their clients, Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory Trainee Form (SAWI-T; Bahrick, 1990) for counselors, and Client Perception of Improvement Survey for clients. Due to the small sample size the researcher had to adjust data analysis from the originally planned multiple regression to bivariate correlation analysis with one-tailed test of significance in order to determine the relationship between Task, Bond and Goal variables and Health and Functioning, Social and Economic, Psychological/Spiritual, Family and Total Quality of Life variables. Based on the results of the bivariate correlation analysis conducted between variables, significant moderate positive relationships were found between Task and Family (r=.635, p<.01), Bond and Health and Functioning (r=.436, p<.05), Bond and Family (r=.624, p<.01), Goal and Health and Functioning (r=.427, p<.05) and Goal and Family (r=.559, p<.05). While several significant relationships were found between the variables, due to the small sample size the results must be interpreted with caution.