© Simon Buckingham Shum

Compendium: A computerised programme for the tracking and measurement of group process

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Marion Brown, Andy Downie, Nicole Howard Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Aylesbury

Simon Buckingham Shum Knowledge Media Institute Open University, Milton Keynes

23rd Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research Ravenscar, UK, March 2010 www.psychotherapyresearch.org

© Simon Buckingham Shum

How do we evidence that group analytic process is an effective medium of change?

  Group analysts believe that group process is a vital factor in helping individual members change pathological patterns of relating to themselves and others?

  This is complex to record and measure: notes alone rarely do it justice

  Cognitive science and information design give us ways to visualize complex phenomena

  A good visualization relieves memory load, and draws analysts’ attention to significant aspects

  Any map filters out noise in order to support specific kinds of interpretation

  “Compendium” is a way to map group process, with the addition of a database, in order to build a searchable evidence base

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© Simon Buckingham Shum

How do we record and understand what’s happening in a group?

  How do we demonstrate that this process enables change in individual members?

  By tracking interactions in the group

  Identifying significant themes, key moments and patterns…

  between members

  between members and the group as a whole

  within individual members

  Understanding how these change over time

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© Simon Buckingham Shum

Murray Cox: Group Interaction Chronogram

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

Patient:

© Simon Buckingham Shum

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

i Beginning

ii Middle

iii End

+ +

-

?

Therapist

Murray Cox: Group Interaction Chronogram

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Compendium software (Open University) http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute

  “Semantic hypermedia” software

  grounded in 25 years’ computing research in the design of flexible tools for managing information and ideas

  Analogy: “a spreadsheet for ideas”

  tools to build a visual language, and arrange, connect, index and search information and ideas

  A bit like mindmapping, but with a full database underpinning it to enable a long-term evidence base

  Free and open source, works on all platforms, funded by UK Research Councils (AHRC; ESRC; EPSRC; e-Science Programme; JISC) 6

© Simon Buckingham Shum

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Context: A brief focused analytic group

  A closed 24 session homogeneous analytic group comprising 8 individuals, 4 male, 4 female and one group conductor

  Group members were within the moderate to severe level of mental health difficulty

  All had complex personal and mental health histories leading to significant difficulty in intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships in their adult lives

  The theme that emerged most clearly at assessment was repressed and/or suppressed anger correlating with severe anxiety/panic and depressive symptomatology

  This formed the group focus 8

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Theme 1: Anger

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Analyst’s record of her interpretation to the group

on the emerging

theme

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Theme 2: Reaching out to one of the group

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The tags on a patient’s icon

show the behaviours

perceived by the analyst

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Theme 3: Medication

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Analyst’s notes on the theme that emerged

towards the group’s

conclusion

© Simon Buckingham Shum

The individual in the group

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Map of the group from a

specific individual’s perspective

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Map of all dynamics

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Private notes on a

patient (dashed

link)

Particularly strong

relationship

No links from other

patients…

Highly active patient

Red ring reminds

analyst of one patient’s effect on the group

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Which behaviours do two patients share? Tags shared in common are orange, tags from one patient in green

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© Simon Buckingham Shum

Analysing the evidence base across sessions

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© Simon Buckingham Shum

Analysing a patient across Sessions 1 and 11

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Focusing on the “tag profile” for a patient in different sessions

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Next steps (1): additional ways of evidencing changes

Group level:   Compare maps from two or more sessions by placing

them next to each other

  Compare the group tag profiles from sessions: by selecting all nodes in a map, all relevant tags ‘light up’

Individual level:   Compare the tag profile for a patient over time, from pre-

group assessment, through early, midway and closing sessions, to review.

  Compare relationships between specific patients across sessions

© Simon Buckingham Shum

Next steps (2): additional ways of evidencing changes

Technological potential:   Video annotation: indexing video data with icons and

connections

  Summary reports/graphs generated from the incidence of tags, links, etc

Theoretical potential:   We would hope to see a shift from negative to more

positive tags over time

  Can we find patterns in tags or links congruent with theoretical predictions? (e.g. matching tags between patients = “mirroring”)