In plain language
Psychologists and psychotherapists undergo long and expensive training, yet surprisingly, research has struggled to show that therapist competence actually matters for how well clients do in treatment. The authors of this protocol argue that this puzzling null result may reflect flawed measurement: existing competence evaluations rely on subjective self-ratings or observer ratings of real therapy sessions, which are contaminated by client characteristics, session context, and inconsistent rating procedures.
The PROCEED project, a four-year study funded by the Research Council of Finland and grounded in process-based therapy (PBT), sets out to fix this. The team will develop and validate the Process-Based Competence Task (PBCT) — a standardised online task in which participants watch video-recorded, simulated therapeutic conversations and identify clinically relevant behaviours and competencies. Because the task is removed from the messiness of live sessions, it isolates the therapist's "know-how" from confounding factors. Validation proceeds in phases: first testing whether the task distinguishes psychology students, psychotherapist trainees, and qualified psychotherapists (n = 240); then testing whether scores improve after further training (n = 160); and finally examining whether competence predicts client outcomes in a brief intervention delivered by novice therapists (n = 70), with clients assessed using process and symptom measures including the Process-Based Assessment Tool (PBAT).
If successful, the PBCT would give intervention science something it currently lacks: a validated, theory-grounded way to measure therapist competence that works across evidence-based therapies. That would provide much-needed empirical evidence on whether — and how — therapist training and skill translate into better care for clients.
Key findings
- Proposes the Process-Based Competence Task (PBCT), a novel video-based tool for assessing psychotherapeutic competence, grounded in process-based therapy rather than protocol-specific ratings.
- Argues that previous meta-analytic null findings on the competence-outcome link likely reflect methodological problems — subjective ratings, confounds from client and session characteristics, and unvalidated measures.
- Phase 1 will test the PBCT's sensitivity to prior training by comparing psychology students, psychotherapist trainees, and qualified psychotherapists (n = 240).
- Phase 2 will test the PBCT's responsiveness to further training among trainees and students over a follow-up period (n = 160).
- Phase 3 will examine whether therapist competence predicts treatment outcomes in a brief intervention delivered by novice therapists (n = 70), using process and symptom measures including the PBAT and CompACT-10.
- The project runs 2024-2028, is approved by the University of Jyväskylä ethics committee, and is preregistered on OSF (doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/B3A7D).
How to cite
APA
Gorinelli, S., Sairanen, E., Hofmann, S. G., Ciarrochi, J., Tuomisto, M. T., & Keinonen, K. (2025). A process-based competence evaluation for evidence-based dissemination (PROCEED): A study protocol. BMC Psychology, 13, 912. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-03228-4
BibTeX
@article{gorinelli2025process,
author = {Gorinelli, Simone and Sairanen, Essi and Hofmann, Stefan G. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Tuomisto, Martti T. and Keinonen, Katariina},
title = {A process-based competence evaluation for evidence-based dissemination (PROCEED): a study protocol},
journal = {BMC Psychology},
year = {2025},
volume = {13},
pages = {912},
doi = {10.1186/s40359-025-03228-4}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
- The Process-Based Assessment Tool (free download)
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.