What Findings Do Psychotherapy Researchers Use in Their Own Practice? A Survey of the Society for Psychotherapy Research

Abstract

Over the past decades, both clinical researchers and practitioners alike have noted the gap between psychotherapy research and practice. Previous research has found that a contributing factor to this gap is that psychotherapy research lacks ecological validity. Therefore, in an effort to distinguish research findings that do have an impact on clinical practice, the present study investigates the following primary question: what particular research findings do psychotherapy researchers, who are also clinical practitioners themselves, find to be useful within their own clinical practice? Since members of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) are comprised of psychotherapy research-practitioners, they were asked to fill out a web-based Psychotherapy Research Questionnaire (PRQ) that would help answer this question.