A NEW MEASURE FOR TRACKING CHANGE IN GROUPS: THE INNOVATIVE MOMENTS CODING SYSTEM FOR GROUPS

Introduction: In psychotherapy research, assessing process change is a challenging act of balance between the necessity for methodological rigor, which can lead to oversimplification, and the need to comprehend the complexity of clinical exchanges. In the field of group process research, due to the inherent complexity of the therapeutic group, researchers have inevitably confronted numerous methodological challenges in designing research methods capable of accounting for all the variables under consideration and their operationalization. Indeed, group process research poses several problems about the interdependence of data obtained in group (Gullo et al., 2010): on the one hand, this relates to the group’s transformative potential; on the other hand, it creates many difficulties from both a methodological and data analysis level (Burlingame, Whitcomb & Woodland, 2014). In group psychotherapy research, there are few reliable measures for tracking members’ change. The Innovative Moment Coding System for Groups (IMCS-G; Esposito et al., accepted) is a reliable method previously developed in one format of group intervention for detecting innovative moments (IMs; Gonçalves et al., 2011). IMs are exceptions to the clients’ problematic narratives, organized in different levels of complexity in terms of meaning elaboration (Level 1, 2, and 3). The IMCS-G originates from previous coding schemes (Esposito et al., 2017; Garcia-Martínez et al., 2020) and consists of 7 categories (Self-Directed, Other-Directed, Explicit Mirroring, Interaction 1, Interaction 2, Collective, Voice of Group) organized in two macro-categories: Individual (e.g., change was narrated by a single participant) and Group IMs (e.g., change was co-constructed by more than one participant). This study aimed at further adapting and testing reliability of the IMCS-G in two different group interventions. Specifically, we intend to verify if the IMCSG’s reliability may be confirmed in another NMP group and proven for the first time in a new group format of intervention, i.e., a group psychotherapy for young substance abusers. Methods: Two reliable coders applied the IMCS-G to analyze the transcripts of nine sessions of a counseling group addressed to underachieving university students (N=10) and eight sessions of a brief group psychotherapy targeted to substance abusers (N=8). Agreement and reliability for IMCS-G categories and their Levels were calculated. Results: Consistently with previous studies, a strong agreement and reliability for IMCS-G categories and Levels were found in both group interventions. Furthermore, despite some differences in the frequency of IMCS-G categories and Levels, in both interventions, there was a higher frequency of Self-Directed IMs, a lower frequency of the Explicit Mirroring IMs, and a higher frequency of Level 3 Group IMs. Conclusions: This study confirmed the reliability of IMCS-G in different group formats, but it also suggested rooms of improvement for some IMCS-G categories, as Explicit Mirroring, which appeared with very low frequency and only at a less complex Level in terms of meaning elaboration. Moreover, findings suggested that IMCS-G categories could be organized in a hierarchy in which Self-Directed IMs represent the basis, and Voice of Group IMs represent the most complex markers of change in terms of meaning elaboration within groups.