Contextual Behavioral Supervision: A Delphi Study

Psychological therapies based on contextual behavioral (CB) principles havebeen a focus of training and dissemination over the last 25 years. It is recognized thatpractitioners wanting to practice these therapies in safe and effective ways should engage inclinical supervision. However, clinical supervision, while regarded as essential, is an under-researched, area of psychological practice in general, and in contextual behavioral science.This study aimed to understand whether there are distinct and agreed-upon features of clinicalsupervision when taking a contextual behavioral (CB) approach. Practitioners who hadpublished in peer reviewed journals and/or presented at Association for ContextualBehavioral Science conferences on CB supervision in the last 20 years were invited to takepart in a Delphi study to find consensus: 20 participants provided responses to an open-endedonline questionnaire on CB supervision. A reflexive thematic analysis, within a qualitativeresearch design, was used to interpret common ideas and themes within the data. Throughanalysis, four main themes were generated: contextual factors, tasks and behaviors,supervision qualities, and supervision purposes. A further round to find consensus was thenconducted, with participants providing ratings of statements based on these themes in anonline survey. Consensus ratings indicated that functional analysis and experiential learningmethods appeared to be central to the practice of CB supervision. Overall, participantsdescribed features of CB supervision, which were both consistent with existing ideas on CBsupervision and contextual behavioral science, as well as clinical supervision more broadly.The results serve to inform future research in the area.