What is the SOFTA-o?

The SOFTA-o is an observational instrument for investigating the process of family therapy and guiding the work of clinicians, trainers and supervisors. The difference between the SOFTA-o and self-report measures of the alliance in family therapy, like the FTAS (Pinsof & Catherall, 1986) or WAI-couples (Symonds & Horvath, 2004,) is that the SOFTA-o is an observer rating scale based on the clients' behavioral manifestations of therapeutic alliance, as well as on the therapists' observable contributions to the alliance.