Treatment duration prediction: Client accuracy and its relationship to dropout, outcome, and satisfaction

The relationship of clients' expected and actual treatment duration was investigated for 230 clients in private practice settings. Clients both expected and attended a relatively low number of visits. These patterns were discrepant with therapists' duration expectations. A stepwise regression analysis indicated that clients' expected number of visits was the single best predictor of clients' actual number of visits and that history of eating disorder, therapist's degree, and client's years of education also contributed to actual number of visits (R =.420). Clients who attended fewer sessions than expected had lower satisfaction, better outcome on two of six measures, and were more often identified dropouts.