Marianne Welmers

Chapter 4 102 Table 4 Pearson’s r correlations between alliances: r (n) 1 2 3 1. Mother (therapist) - .315* (50) .816*** (22) 2. Mother (client) .671*** (41) - .152 (20) 3. Father (therapist) .803*** (21) .433* (19) - 4. Father (client) .710** (11) .683** (11) .758** (11) 5. Youth (therapist) .523** (25) .354* (25) .693** (11) 6. Youth (client) -.239 (10) .332 (10) .333 (4) Note. Correlations for T1 measures are reported above diagonal, correlations for T2 measures below diagonal. + p ≤ .10. * p ≤ .05. ** p ≤ .01. *** p ≤ .001 (one-tailed) Discussion We investigated (a) if discrepancies between alliances with different family members in family treatment occur, and how they develop over the course of family treatment, and (b) how the therapist evaluates multiple alliances and their discrepancies in a Dutch home- based family treatment for youth problems. Alliance Discrepancies in Family Treatment Our study findings confirm our hypotheses that discrepancies between family members occur, but become somewhat smaller during treatment. We found that, regardless of who reported on the alliance, mothers had stronger alliances with their therapist as compared to fathers. This findingmight partially be explained by the impression that contacts during treatment tend to be most intensive with mothers, that is: in our study mothers were present in 93% of the observed sessions, whereas fathers were present in only 35% of the observed sessions. When contacts withmothers during treatment aremore frequent as compared to those with fathers, alliances with mothers may also have more time and opportunity to evolve, and therefore might be stronger. Differences in alliance strength between fathers and mothers might also be explained by a gender match between mothers and therapists, given the fact that most therapists (86%) in the current samplewere female. This hypothesis is further supportedby findings of previous studies on the effect of gender match on alliance or on satisfaction with the therapeutic relationship, indicating that female client-therapist dyads have the strongest alliance in adult and adolescent substance abuse treatment (Kuusisto & Artkoski, 2013; Wintersteen et al., 2005), marriage and family therapy (Johnson & Caldwell, 2011), and a collection of varying psychosocial treatments for adults (Bhati, 2014). Bhati (2014), however, speaks of a