Methodology
Overview
Our compatibility profile is not a clinical diagnosis. It predicts the level of a match between a client and therapist and can be used to help inform decisions or for personal reflection.
Psychmatch uses the following criteria to predict compatibility:
Personality
Coping style
Therapeutic orientation (that is, the importance of focusing on certain issues or problems in therapy)
Shared life experiences (such as values and past times)
We also measure overall readiness for therapy and factor in demographic preferences such as gender and age to provide a comprehensive match.
Each criteria is allocated a score using standardised statistical methods. Individual scores are converted into overall compatibility and readiness for therapy scores. The higher the overall scores the better the match is likely to be.
Each criteria is selected based on published research in academic journals consistently indicating they may have an impact on treatment outcomes, advice from an expert panel of PhD level experts in psychology and similar fields and extensive stakeholder testing.
Personality
Theory: Therapy is an interpersonal sharing and communication experience. The greater the dyad, the greater the likelihood of the communication being ‘on target’.
Methodology: Both client and therapist complete a personality scale. Match on level of similarity.
Personality domains: The personality scale identifies five personality domains. The below descriptions are based on an extensive reading of the scientific literature on personality measurement and was written by Dr. John A. Johnson.
Extraversion
Extraversion is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Extraverts enjoy being with people, are full of energy, and often experience positive emotions. They tend to be enthusiastic, action-oriented, individuals who are likely to say "Yes!" or "Let's go!" to opportunities for excitement. In groups they like to talk, assert themselves, and draw attention to themselves.
Introverts lack the exuberance, energy, and activity levels of extraverts. They tend to be quiet, low-key, deliberate, and disengaged from the social world. Their lack of social involvement should not be interpreted as shyness or depression; the introvert simply needs less stimulation than an extravert and prefers to be alone. The independence and reserve of the introvert is sometimes mistaken as unfriendliness or arrogance. In reality, an introvert who scores high on the agreeableness dimension will not seek others out but will be quite pleasant when approached.
Agreeableness
Agreeableness reflects individual differences in concern with cooperation and social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are therefore considerate, friendly, generous, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with others'. Agreeable people also have an optimistic view of human nature. They believe people are basically honest, decent, and trustworthy.
Disagreeable individuals place self-interest above getting along with others. They are generally unconcerned with others' well-being, and therefore are unlikely to extend themselves for other people. Sometimes their skepticism about others' motives causes them to be suspicious, unfriendly, and uncooperative.
Agreeableness is obviously advantageous for attaining and maintaining popularity. Agreeable people are better liked than disagreeable people. On the other hand, agreeableness is not useful in situations that require tough or absolute objective decisions. Disagreeable people can make excellent scientists, critics, or soldiers.
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness concerns the way in which we control, regulate, and direct our impulses. Impulses are not inherently bad; occasionally time constraints require a snap decision, and acting on our first impulse can be an effective response. Also, in times of play rather than work, acting spontaneously and impulsively can be fun. Impulsive individuals can be seen by others as colorful, fun-to-be-with, and zany.
Nonetheless, acting on impulse can lead to trouble in a number of ways. Some impulses are antisocial. Uncontrolled antisocial acts not only harm other members of society, but also can result in retribution toward the perpetrator of such impulsive acts. Another problem with impulsive acts is that they often produce immediate rewards but undesirable, long-term consequences. Examples include excessive socializing that leads to being fired from one's job, hurling an insult that causes the breakup of an important relationship, or using pleasure-inducing drugs that eventually destroy one's health.
Impulsive behaviour, even when not seriously destructive, diminishes a person's effectiveness in significant ways. Acting impulsively disallows contemplating alternative courses of action, some of which would have been wiser than the impulsive choice. Impulsivity also side tracks people during projects that require organized sequences of steps or stages. Accomplishments of an impulsive person are therefore small, scattered, and inconsistent.
A hallmark of intelligence, what potentially separates human beings from earlier life forms, is the ability to think about future consequences before acting on an impulse. Intelligent activity involves contemplation of long-range goals, organizing and planning routes to these goals, and persisting toward one's goals in the face of short-lived impulses to the contrary. The idea that intelligence involves impulse control is nicely captured by the term prudence, an alternative label for the Conscientiousness domain. Prudent means both wise and cautious. Persons who score high on the Conscientiousness scale are, in fact, perceived by others as intelligent.
The benefits of high conscientiousness are obvious. Conscientious individuals avoid trouble and achieve high levels of success through purposeful planning and persistence. They are also positively regarded by others as intelligent and reliable. On the negative side, they can be compulsive perfectionists and workaholics. Furthermore, extremely conscientious individuals might be regarded as stuffy and boring. Unconscientious people may be criticized for their unreliability, lack of ambition, and failure to stay within the lines, but they will experience many short-lived pleasures and they will never be called stuffy.
Neuroticism
Freud originally used the term neurosis to describe a condition marked by mental distress, emotional suffering, and an inability to cope effectively with the normal demands of life. He suggested that everyone shows some signs of neurosis, but that we differ in our degree of suffering and our specific symptoms of distress. Today neuroticism refers to the tendency to experience negative feelings. Those who score high on Neuroticism may experience primarily one specific negative feeling such as anxiety, anger, or depression, but are likely to experience several of these emotions.
People high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive. They respond emotionally to events that would not affect most people, and their reactions tend to be more intense than normal. They are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Their negative emotional reactions tend to persist for unusually long periods of time, which means they are often in a bad mood. These problems in emotional regulation can diminish a neurotic's ability to think clearly, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress.
At the other end of the scale, individuals who score low in neuroticism are less easily upset and are less emotionally reactive. They tend to be calm, emotionally stable, and free from persistent negative feelings. Freedom from negative feelings does not mean that low scorers experience a lot of positive feelings; frequency of positive emotions is a component of the Extraversion domain.
Openness to experience
Openness to Experience describes a dimension of cognitive style that distinguishes imaginative, creative people from down-to-earth, conventional people. Open people are intellectually curious, appreciative of art, and sensitive to beauty. They tend to be, compared to closed people, more aware of their feelings. They tend to think and act in individualistic and nonconforming ways. Intellectuals typically score high on Openness to Experience; consequently, this factor has also been called Culture or Intellect. Nonetheless, Intellect is probably best regarded as one aspect of openness to experience. Scores on Openness to Experience are only modestly related to years of education and scores on standard intelligent tests.
Another characteristic of the open cognitive style is a facility for thinking in symbols and abstractions far removed from concrete experience. Depending on the individual's specific intellectual abilities, this symbolic cognition may take the form of mathematical, logical, or geometric thinking, artistic and metaphorical use of language, music composition or performance, or one of the many visual or performing arts. People with low scores on openness to experience tend to have narrow, common interests. They prefer the plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. They may regard the arts and sciences with suspicion, regarding these endeavours as abstruse or of no practical use. Closed people prefer familiarity over novelty; they are conservative and resistant to change.
Openness is often presented as healthier or more mature by psychologists, who are often themselves open to experience. However, open and closed styles of thinking are useful in different environments. The intellectual style of the open person may serve a professor well, but research has shown that closed thinking is related to superior job performance in police work, sales, and a number of service occupations.
Coping Style
Theory: Incongruities in therapy can arise over the ways in which clients and therapists prefer to solve the client’s problems. Requiring from clients’ responses that may run counter to certain preferred ways of coping with the problem or violate certain behavioural norms may decrease the credibility of the therapist or the treatment.
Methodology: Clients complete a coping scale in reference to an important interpersonal problem they had experienced within the last 12 months. Therapists complete a coping scale in reference to a common interpersonal problem that they have advised clients on in the last 12 months. Match on level of similarity.
The coping scale identifies 14 coping styles:
Active coping: Taking action, exerting efforts, to remove or circumvent the stressor. Active coping can include initiating direct action, increasing one's efforts, and trying to execute a coping attempt.
Planning: Thinking about how to confront the stressor, planning one’s active coping efforts. Planning can involve coming up with action strategies, thinking about what steps to take and how best to handle the problem.
Use of instrumental social support: Seeking assistance, information or advice about what to do.
Use of emotional social support: Getting sympathy or emotional support from someone.
Positive framing: Making the best of the situation by growing from it or viewing it in a more favourable light.
Acceptance: Accepting the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real. One might expect acceptance to be particularly important in circumstances in which the stressor is something that must be accommodated to, as opposed to circumstances in which the stressor can easily be changed or avoided.
Denial: An attempt to reject the reality of the stressful event. Denial can be useful, minimizing distress and thereby facilitating coping. Alternatively, it can create additional problems unless the stressor can be ignored. A third view is that denial is useful at early stages of a stressful transaction but impedes coping later on.
Religious coping: Increased engagement in religious activities. Religion might serve as a source of emotional support, as a vehicle for positive reinterpretation and growth, or as a tactic of active coping with a stressor.
Focus on and venting of emotions: An increased awareness of one’s emotional distress and a simultaneous tendency to ventilate or discharge those feelings. Such a response may be functional, for example, if a person uses a period of mourning to accommodate to the loss of a loved one and move forward. Alternatively, focusing on these emotions (particularly for long periods) can impede adjustment.
Behavioural disengagement: Giving up or withdrawing effort from the attempt to attain the goal with which the stressor is interfering. Behavioural disengagement can be closely linked to helplessness. It most likely occurs when people expect poor coping outcomes.
Self-distraction: Psychological disengagement from the goal with which the stressor is interfering. Mental disengagement can include using alternative activities to take one's mind off a problem, such as daydreaming, escape through sleep, or escape by immersion in TV.
Substance use: Turning to the use of alcohol or other drugs as a way of disengaging from the stressor.
Humour: Making jokes about the stressor or the issue.
Self-blame: Blaming oneself for the situation.
Therapeutic Orientation
Theory: Therapy consists of a variety of treatment goals and methods. The greater the dyad, the greater the likelihood of treatment methods being on target and belief in its effectiveness.
Methodology: Both client and therapist complete a therapeutic orientation scale. Match on level of similarity.
Therapeutic groups: The therapeutic orientation scale identifies 7 therapeutic groups. The below descriptions are extracted from the American Psychological Association, Dictionary of Psychology and other sources.
Psychodynamic
Psychodynamic psychology aims to enhance the client’s self-awareness and foster understanding of the client’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in relation to their past experiences, especially his or her experiences as a child. This is usually accomplished by the therapist guiding the client through the examination of unresolved conflicts and significant events in the client’s past.
The assumption in psychodynamic therapy is that chronic problems are rooted in the unconscious mind and must be brought to light. Thus, the client must have the self-awareness to discover these unconscious patterns of thought and an understanding of how these patterns came to be in order to deal with them.
Biological
Biological psychology addresses psychological issues by studying the physical basis of human behaviour. It involves such things as studying the brain, immune system, nervous system, and genetics. A commonly known method is electric wave therapy in severe conditions.
Family
Family psychology views individuals’ problems in the context of the larger unit. It aims to help family members in improving communication, solving family problems, understanding and handling special family situations, and creating a better functioning home environment.
Environmental
Environmental psychology is a multidisciplinary field that investigates the effects of the physical environment on human behaviour and welfare. Influences studied may include environmental stressors (e.g., noise, crowding, air pollution, temperature); design variables (e.g., lighting); the design of technology; and larger, more ambient qualities of the physical environment, such as floorplan layouts, the size and location of buildings, and proximity to nature.
Cognitive
Cognitive psychology explores the operation of mental processes related to perceiving, attending, thinking, language, and memory, mainly through inferences from behaviour. It looks at how people process information and how the treatment of that information leads to responses.
The assumption in cognitive psychology is that psychological distress is largely the result of a disturbance in cognitive processes. It focuses on changing cognition to produce desired changes in emotions and/or behaviour. It is usually a time-limited, educational treatment that is targeted at specific problems.
Humanistic
Humanistic psychology focuses on an individuals’ capacity to make their own choices, create their own style of life, and actualize themselves in their own way. Its approach is holistic, and its emphasis is on the development of human potential through direct experience, the here and now, concrete personality change, responsibility for oneself, and trust in natural processes and spontaneous feeling.
Pragmatic
Pragmatic psychology acknowledges that there are different paradigms within psychology. It assumes that the profusion of competing theoretical points of view is a rich resource for assessment, formulation, and intervention. It views all theoretical concepts and related methods as potential tools to be employed in practical problem solving.
Shared life experiences
Theory: Personality alone may not translate if parties have drastically different life experiences. Peer support, that is shared experience of a condition to help someone else manage that condition, has a long-proven history. Therapy is not peer support however, the greater the shared life experience, for example, values and interests, the greater the likelihood of communication being ‘on target’.
Methodology: Both client and therapist complete a life experience scale. Match on level of similarity.
Readiness for therapy
Purpose: Readiness for therapy is included as a means of self-reflection for the client and as additional information for the therapist.
Methodology: Clients complate a readiness for therapy scale.
The readiness for therapy scale provides 7 dimensions:
Importance of change: a self reported measure of the importance in changing
Confidence of change: a self reported measure of confidence in changing
Readiness to change: a self reported measure of readiness to change
Feeling supported: a self reported measure in the level of support to change
Expected timeframe for change: a self reported measure in the timeframe for change
Areas of concern: summary of self reported areas of concern
Supports currently in place: a list of supports currently in place.
Demographic preferences
Preference in age and gender of the therapist is included to capture a comprehensive match.