Article Correctness Is Author's Responsibility: Does the cohesion—outcome relationship change over time? A dynamic model of change in group psychotherapy.

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Although it is well established that group cohesion is important for client improvement in group psychotherapy, less is known about how the cohesionâ€"outcome relationship varies over the course of group therapy. No known study has formally tested the association between group cohesion and outcome as a dynamic relationship over the course of group therapy. Moreover, previous research has not routinely monitored cohesion and outcome session-to-session, which has limited researcher's ability to study the cohesionâ€"outcome relationship at the session and member levels. Therefore, as part of a larger randomized clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of feedback in group therapy, the current study examined the cohesionâ€"outcome relationship over time within-clients and between-clients. More specifically, we partitioned session-to-session cohesion data from 41 members across 5 interpersonal process groups into within-client and between-client predictors of well-being, and modeled interactions with time to test the development of the cohesionâ€"outcome relationship across the span of the groups. Model fit comparisons indicated that a model testing within and between cohesion effects over time was a better fitting model compared to a model that tested within and between components that did not include a time effect. Additionally, our main analyses indicated that time significantly moderated the cohesionâ€"outcome relationship at the client level (between-client effect), but not the session level (within-client effect). This means the between-client cohesionâ€"outcome effect significantly increased over the course of the group. Implications for group practice and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)