Name and Type of Assessment Procedure
The Four Session Evaluation is a semi-structured interview procedure that is used both as an intervention and as an assessment in the first four sessions of couple therapy.
Introduction
Couple problems involve multiple factors that the therapist needs to understand including the individual, the relationship, the environmental contexts in which the individuals and the relationship operate within, as well as the bidirectional influences of each (Stanton and Welsh 2011). In an attempt to embrace and disentangle that complexity, many therapists use a format commonly referred to as the four session evaluation (Chambers 2012; Karpel 1994). This interview model is transtheoretical and systemic; thus, it can be used with any theoretical orientation.
Developers
Mark Karpel (1994), to the best knowledge available, was the first person to write on this procedure in his book, Evaluating Couples. Since then, although other practitioners have used a similar...
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References
Chambers, A. L. (2008). Premarital counseling with middle class African Americans: The forgotten group. In M. Rastogi & V. Thomas (Eds.), Multicultural couple therapy. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Chambers, A. L. (2012). A systemically infused, integrative model for conceptualizing couples’ problems: The Four Session evaluation. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 1(1), 31–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027505.
Chambers, A. L., & Lebow, J. (2008). Common and unique factors in assessing African American couples. In L. L. Abate (Ed.), Toward a science of clinical psychology: Laboratory evaluations and interventions. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Chambers, A. L., & Kravitz, A. K. (2011). Understanding the disproportionately low marriage rate among African Americans: An amalgam of sociological and psychological constraints. Family Relations, 60, 648–660. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2011.00673.x.
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Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (1995). The longitudinal course of marital quality and stability: A review of theory, method, and research. Psychological Bulletin, 118, 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/00332909.118.1.3.
Karpel, M. A. (1994). Evaluating couples: A handbook for practitioners. New York: Norton.
Sperry, L. (2005). Case conceptualization: A strategy for incorporating individual, couple and family dynamics in the treatment process. American Journal of Family Therapy, 33, 353–364.
Stanton, M., & Welsh, R. (2011). Specialty competencies in couple and family psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Chambers, A.L. (2018). The Four Session Assessment in Couple Therapy. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_679-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_679-1
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