Influence of separate interviews on clinicians' evaluative perceptions in family therapy

The parents and identified patients of 68 families in both conjoint and separate assessment interviews were rated by 48 clinical staff and students according to the semantic differential technique. Each evaluating clinician saw the entire family in a conjoint interview and either the parents or the child identified as the patient during a separate interview. As predicted, clinicians who had separately interviewed identified patients rated them more favorably than did clinicians who had instead conducted separate interviews of parents. Ratings of parents, however, were unaffected by the separate interview variable. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).