The Relationship of Psychotherapist Demographic Variables to Discipline Board Misconduct Content

This study was designed as an investigation of psychotherapist variables that correlate with the contents of findings of misconduct. While there is a scarcity of current research regarding clinician characteristics that correlate with professional misconduct, many assumptions and untested hypotheses appear. In particular, gender is often identified as a critical component of professional misconduct. Despite these common assertions, virtually no published research exists regarding correlations between gender and marriage and family therapist (MFT) professional misconduct. This study employed a retrospective cross-sectional study to analyze a randomized convenience sample of the records of final determinations of psychotherapist disciplinary actions across eight states. Four predictor variables (gender, years of experience, geographical region, and type of license) were correlated with five criterion variables consisting of word counts for five linguistic categories (family, substance, finance, sex, friend, and recordkeeping words). Frequency rates of the criterion variables were calculated. Relationships between all variables were evaluated through a multiple linear regression analysis. The data show a wide variation of prevalence rates across the predictor variables. Five of the multiple regression analyses produced statistically significant results. Gender was related to both family and substance use related words, while years of practice was related to family, finance, sex, friend, and recordkeeping words. No relationship was found between recordkeeping words and any of the predictor variables. Similarly, no relationship was found between any of the criterion variables and geographic region or license type.