ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1530713
Screening for Psychotherapy Readiness with the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) and the Readiness for Psychotherapy Index (RPI)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Psychiatric Research Unit, Psychiatry Region Zealand, Slagelse, Denmark
- 2Mental Health Centre Ballerup, Capital Region of Denmark, Ballerup, Denmark
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It is important to assess patients' level of readiness before starting a course of psychotherapy, but only a few validated instruments are currently available for that purpose.Patients waiting for psychotherapy were administered the Danish translations of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) and the Readiness for Psychotherapy Index (RPI) prior to commencing psychotherapy. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis of the instruments' previously suggested factor structure, as well as evaluating the instruments' ability to identify early adherence to psychotherapy by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and regression analysis.One hundred and fifty-five patients with emotional, personality, and post-traumatic stress disorders were included. The instruments showed poor to average psychometric properties and poor predictive validity regarding early adherence to psychotherapy.Findings indicated thBackground:It is important to assess patients’ level of readiness before starting a course of psychotherapy, but only a few validated instruments are currently available for that purpose.Methods:Patients waiting for psychotherapy were administered the Danish translations of the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) and the Readiness for Psychotherapy Index (RPI) prior to commencing psychotherapy. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis of the instruments’ previously suggested factor structure, as well as evaluating the instruments’ ability to identify early adherence to psychotherapy by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and regression analysis.Results:One hundred and fifty-five patients with emotional, personality, and post-traumatic stress disorders were included. The instruments showed poor to average psychometric properties and poor predictive validity regarding early adherence to psychotherapy.Discussion:Findings indicated that the Danish URICA and RPI possess average psychometric properties and have limited validity for predicting early adherence to psychotherapy in psychiatric outpatients awaiting psychotherapy.at the Danish URICA and RPI possess average psychometric properties and have limited validity for predicting early adherence to psychotherapy in psychiatric outpatients awaiting psychotherapy.
Keywords: RPI, URICA, readiness, URICA scale, RPI scale, Psychotherapy
Received: 19 Nov 2024; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hovmand, Reinholt, Bryde Christensen, Bach and Arnfred. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Oliver Rumle Hovmand, Psychiatric Research Unit, Psychiatry Region Zealand, Slagelse, Denmark
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