Making assessment relevant to treatment planning: the STS clinician rating form

This article reports on the development of a computerized, clinician-based method of assessing patient variables that contribute to differential assignment of psychotherapy models. In the current health care environment, omnibus personality tests and current state measures are both expensive and insensitive to most of the empirically defined patient characteristics that have been identified as indicators of different treatment qualities. Moreover, reliance on patient self-report introduces a variety of distortions and limits predictive studies and follow-up assessments to those who are cooperative. These factors limit the usefulness of the currently available procedures. Aptitude-Treatment-Interaction (ATI) research has revealed differential effects of manualized cognitive, interpersonal, and insight-oriented treatments as a function on a select number of relatively specific personality and symptom qualities. A cost- and time-efficient method of measuring these dimensions could increase the power of treatment by identifying in advance those that are likely to be most effective for a given patient. The STS (Systematic Treatment Selection) Clinician Rating Form is a relatively brief, clinician-based measure of a variety of patient dimensions, including subjective distress, various aspects of coping style, and resistance traits. Current data reveal good interrater reliability and adequate levels of discriminant and convergent validity.