Macrovariables in affective expression in women with breast cancer participating in support groups

摘要: The goals of this chapter are to present a rationale and methodology for closely examining emotional expression and verbal narratives from videotape of group therapy sessions. Emotional expression is often assumed to be a mechanism necessary for change processes to take place in therapy (Greenberg 1993), though change in emotional expression is rarely documented or tested as an outcome variable (Giese–Davis et al. 2002b).Although many of the techniques we present for coding group therapy would be generalizable across populations and settings, our design was implemented to study breast cancer support groups in particular. Empirical evidence about the role of emotional expression in breast cancer survival has accumulated over many years, and provides a justiWcation for the careful study we have designed. We will begin with a general discussion of behavioral research on group therapy and the rationale and hypotheses that have generated our particular study of emotion in breast cancer support groups. We will then proceed to describe our methodology for coding these naturally occurring groups, to present some sample data from our work, and to oVer the emotion coding and verbal narrative deWnitions we use for coding in Appendix 1 and 2.