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Session impact in Stress Management Training
Author(s) -
Reynolds Shirley,
Taylor Emma,
Shapiro David A.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of occupational and organizational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.257
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 2044-8325
pISSN - 0963-1798
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8325.1993.tb00520.x
Subject(s) - session (web analytics) , psychology , mood , interpersonal communication , psychological intervention , clinical psychology , stress management , intervention (counseling) , psychotherapist , applied psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , computer science , world wide web
Although Stress Management Training (SMT) appears to result in modest benefits for participants, it is unclear if these benefits are due to non‐specific factors or specific skills related interventions. SMT with health care staff was delivered in six weekly sessions, with each session devoted to specific tasks and goals. Using a session impact methodology developed in psychotherapy research, participants rated each session in terms of depth, smoothness, post‐session mood and 12 specific impacts, including task and interpersonal positive impacts, and problematic, negative impacts. As a validity check, SMT session ratings were compared with session ratings from psychotherapy sessions. As expected, SMT sessions resembled sessions of cognitive behavioural psychotherapy and differed from sessions of psychodynamic/interpersonal therapy. Impact ratings of SMT sessions were of three types: those which did not differ between sessions; those which appeared to reflect non‐specific and group processes—which showed a significant linear trend over time; and those which reflected specific session content where no linear trend was detected but one or more sessions differed significantly from others. As in psychotherapy research, session impact ratings are a promising method of identifying specific mechanisms of change in worksite intervention studies.