40-3 Development of Group Counseling Working Alliance Scale
The purpose of this study is to develop a group counseling working alliance scale (GCWAS), which helps the group leaders understand their working alliance with members and can be used as a measure to evaluate the group process. By the translation and back translation method and expert validity check, the authors translated and modified the Group Therapy Alliance Scale (GTAS) originally developed by Marziali, Munroe-Blum, and McCleary (1997). There are 36 items in this original scale. Through a pilot study with 274 samples, only 32 items would be used in the formal scale after a factor analysis. A total of 318 participants were involved in this study to evaluate their attitude toward the group counseling working alliance. The results revealed that the Cronbach's α of the GCWAS was.95. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the fitting indices for this scale and validity was evaluated by the convergent validity and discriminant validity. A significant correlation was found between GCWAS and group climate. In addition, a significant correlation was found between GCWAS and the positive feeling for the group. The correlation between GCWAS and cohesion was .73. The correlation between GCWAS and engagement, avoidance, and conflict was .58, .18, and -.27 respectively. In general, GCWAS has sound psychometric property regarding its reliability and validity. Moreover, these results identified that the three domains in the Content Dimension are (a) Goal, (b) Task, and (c) Bond; the four domains in the Interpersonal Dimension are (a) Member and Group Leader, (b) Other Members and Group Leader, (c) Member and Other Members, and (d) Group and Group Leader relationships. These two dimensions form a 3×4 matrix. Finally, the implications of this scale and future research directions were discussed.
Keywords
group climate ； group cohesion ； group counseling ； group counseling working alliance ； working alliance
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