Methods
Both versions of the Development of Coaches questionnaire are based on one devised by the Collaborative Research Network of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in their international study of development among professional psychotherapists described by Orlinsky and Rønnestad in How Psychotherapists Develop (Orlinsky & Rønnestad, 005). Both of the coaching studies include questions that parallel those used in the Society’s Development of Psychotherapists Common Core Questionnaire. This enables us not only to study varied aspects of coaches’ development, but also compare responses of coaches to these made by psychotherapists. Many questions have been posed over the past twenty years concerning the similarities and differences between professional coaching and psychotherapy. The data being gathered in these two surveys will provide some of the first answers regarding this comparison.
Modification of Development of Psychotherapists Survey
In adapting the questionnaire, members of the Development of Coaches Research Collaborative drew on their own experiences as coaches to ask questions that they hoped would seem meaningful and relevant to those responding to the questionnaire. The majority of questions could be answered quickly by checking alternatives that most closely reflected the respondent’s own experience.
