Group Outcome: The Mediating Influence of Member Goals and Expectations

The relationship between the establishment of pregroup goals and post-group assessment of progress toward goals was investigated in ten-week counseling groups in a natural agency setting. For purposes of analysis, 198 group participants were categorized by their selection of three top goals, with interpersonal-relationship and self-confidence goals deter-mining the category. The progress-toward-goal post-test revealed more progress on top-ranking goals than on other goals. Less obtrusive seman-tic differential scales revealed no differences on post-tests mediated by pretreatment goal selection, but there was across-category gain on the semantic differential post-tests. An intangible, although significant, influence on the therapeutic group experience involves the expectations and goals the clients bring to the group. A number of authors believe that outcome is significantly affected by the group member’s expectations about the experience (Egan, 1970; Yalom, 1975; Goldstein, Heller, & Sechrest, 1966). Yalom pointed out that the decision to drop out may depend on whether the group experience matches the member’s pregroup expectations. Simi-larly, Lieberman (1974) showed that expectations of change within groups and of the central issues dealt with by groups are often inaccu-rate. The significant implications were pointed out by Lee and Bednar (1977, p. 191): &dquo;The relationship between improved learning and ap