Examination of the Psychotherapy Preference Effect

What is it about?

Client preferences have been found to influence both therapy dropout and treatment outcomes. However, little is known about whether accommodating preferences is more important for certain types of clients or in certain treatment situations. A metaregression with data from 33 studies and 6,058 clients was conducted testing 6 client and treatment variables as predictors of the preference effects. In the included studies, clients whose preferences were matched showed better outcomes and were less likely to drop out of treatment prematurely regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, educational level, or marital status. In addition, nonmatched clients were even more likely to prematurely terminate from shorter duration treatments, accounting for approximately 50% of the variance in dropout-rate differences between preference matched and nonmatched clients. The results from the included studies suggest that although preference matching may be particularly important in briefer interventions, there is no evidence that the effect of accommodating client preferences differs depending on the demographics of the client.

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