Balancing effectiveness with responsiveness: Therapist satisfaction across different treatment designs in the Child STEPs randomized effectiveness trial.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the association between protocol design and therapist satisfaction in the Child STEPs Randomized Effectiveness Trial (Weisz et al., 2012). METHOD Therapist report was obtained at the close of 145 cases seen by 77 therapists, each of whom was randomized to a Standard evidence-based treatment (EBT), modular EBT, or usual care (UC) condition. RESULTS Analysis of satisfaction items revealed 2 correlated factors representing perceived effectiveness and perceived responsiveness of the treatments. Therapist total satisfaction scores were significantly higher for cases in the modular condition than for those in the standard EBT or UC conditions. With regard to specific dimensions, the modular and UC cases were rated significantly higher than standard EBT cases on the Responsiveness scale, whereas modular and standard EBT cases were rated significantly higher than UC on the Effectiveness scale. Finally, increases in Effectiveness scores from first to second case were significantly larger for Modular cases than for cases in both other study conditions, and increases from first to second case in Total Satisfaction scores were significantly larger for modular cases than for UC cases. CONCLUSIONS Therapist satisfaction with a treatment approach has independent dimensions, which can vary as a function of the protocol design. By virtue of being perceived as more effective than UC and more responsive than standard EBTs, the modular protocol design was also viewed as more overall satisfying than both, and secondary analysis suggested that these results were not due to mere first impressions of the protocols.