Training related changes in the ways that group trainees structure their knowledge of group counseling leader interventions.

Pathfinder Network Analyses (Schvaneveldt, 1990) was used to examine changes and convergence in the knowledge structure of group counseling interventions, for 33 group counseling trainees and three experienced group therapists. The similarity of each pair of 19 group interventions was obtained by examining the co-occurrence of these interventions across 21 situations depicted in the Group Therapy Questionnaire (GTQ; Wile, Brown, & Pollack, 1970). The Pathfinder analyses of these similarity matrices were used to infer the knowledge structure of group counseling interventions of the trainees (pre and post group practicum class) and the three experienced group therapists. Analyses of the structural features of the pre- and post-training knowledge structures suggested that prior to the practicum class, novice group counselors’ knowledge structures were linear and simplistic and contained fewer circular patterns among the interventions compared with the knowledge structures of the experienced group therapists. As hypothesized the novices’ maps became more complex, hierarchical, evidenced more circular patterns, and were more similar to the experienced therapist’s knowledge structure after the practicum class. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)