Contextual behavioral supervision: A Delphi study

Psychological therapies based on contextual behavioral (CB) principles have been a focus of training and dissemination over the last 25 years. It is recognized that practitioners wanting to practice these therapies in safe and effective ways should engage in clinical supervision. However, clinical supervision, while regarded as essential, is an under-researched, area of psychological practice in general, and in contextual behavioral science. This study aimed to explore whether there are distinct and agreed-upon features of clinical supervision when taking a contextual behavioral (CB) approach. Practitioners who had published in peer reviewed journals and/or presented at Association for Contextual Behavioral Science conferences on CB supervision in the last 20 years were invited to take part in a Delphi study to find consensus: 20 participants provided responses to an open-ended online questionnaire on CB supervision. A reflexive thematic analysis, within a qualitative research design, was used to interpret common ideas and themes within the data. Through analysis, four main themes were generated: contextual factors, tasks and behaviors, supervision qualities, and supervision purposes. A further round to find consensus was then conducted, with participants providing ratings of statements based on these themes in an online survey. Consensus ratings indicated that functional analysis and experiential learning methods appeared to be central to the practice of CB supervision. Overall, participants described features of CB supervision, which were both consistent with existing ideas on CB supervision and contextual behavioral science, as well as clinical supervision more broadly. The results serve to form a foundation for future research through identifying common and agreed upon factors in CB supervision an inform future research in the area.

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