Marianne Welmers

Alliance Discrepancies 99 CHAPTER 4 Our hypothesis that the therapists’ perspective is more congruent with self-reports for parents’ alliances as compared to youths, and for mothers’ alliances as compared to fathers’ was partially confirmed. As shown in Table 4, therapist-reports of the alliance with mothers had a moderate positive correlation with mothers’ self-reports at T1 and a large correlation at T2, with both correlations significant. Therapists’ ratings of alliances with fathers were slightly negatively correlated with fathers’ self-reports at T1, just as therapists’ ratings of alliances with youths were slightly negatively correlated with youths’ self-reports at T1. However, both correlationswere not significant. Thedifferencebetween mothers and fathers in the strength of the correlation between therapist- and self-reports was trend-significant ( z = 1.533, p = .063). The differences between mothers and youths ( z = 1.064, p = .144) and between fathers and youths ( z = -0.246, p = .403) in the strength of the correlation between therapist- and self-report were both not significant. These findings were partially in line with our hypothesis, as they indicate to some extent that therapists were more congruent in their alliance perspective with mothers as compared to fathers, but do not indicate that therapists were significantly more congruent in their alliance perspective with parents as compared to youths. At T2, correlations between therapist- and self-reported alliance increased for both mothers and fathers, while the difference in the strength of these correlations was not significant ( z = -0.632, p = .264). In contrast to our hypothesis, this indicates that the therapist’s perspective on the alliance was just as congruent with the perspective of mothers as with fathers when treatment was in the active change phase. For alliances with youths, the correlation between therapist-report and self-report at T2 was small and not significant. Differences in therapist-report and self-report correlations were significant both betweenmothers and youths ( z = 1.793, p = 0.036) and fathers and youths ( z = 1.771, p = .038). This indicates, as hypothesized, that in the active change phase of treatment therapists were more congruent in their perspective on the alliance with parents as compared to youths.