Construction and Testing of A Marital/Couple Therapy Satisfaction Measure

Therapy is inundated with self-report instruments/measures for clients (Corcoran & Fischer, 1987)(Touliatos, Perlmutter, & Straus, 1989); most of them focused for individual therapy. Many of these instruments are used for assessment purposes, while some others are related to outcome (Fredman & Sherman, 1987) (Corcoran & Fischer, 1987). One neglected area is that of instruments devised to measure satisfaction with specific content areas oftherapy. Another neglected area is an instrument designed specifically for marital/couple therapy. This research devised and tested a client self-report satisfaction measure specifically for couples in therapy. The items of the Marital Therapy Satisfaction Measure (MTSM) were derived from a review of literature of research focusing on both therapists' and clients' perspectives of important/essential elements linked to effective marital/couple therapy. Forty- five clients engaged in a minimum of four sessions of marital/couple therapy were surveyed. Clients completed the MTSM and the Oient Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8), a self-report satisfaction instrument with already established validity and reliability. Results reported a significant correlation between the MTSM and the CSQ-8. Further analysis on the data revealed gender and other demographic effects on levels of satisfaction with marital/couple therapy. Concerns regarding sample size and variance are discussed, as well as suggestions for furthering this research and the potential of the MTSM