Group Outcome: The Mediating Influence of Member Goals and Expectations

The relationship between the establishment of pregroup goals and post- group assessment of progress toward goals was investigated in ten-week counseling groups in a natural agency setting. For purposes of analysis, 198 group participants were categorized by their selection of three top goals, with interpersonal-relationship and self-confidence goals deter mining the category. The progress-toward-goal post-test revealed more progress on top-ranking goals than on other goals. Less obtrusive seman tic differential scales revealed no differences on post-tests mediated by pretreatment goal selection, but there was across-category gain on the semantic differential post-tests.