Common Factors Questionnaire

The Common Factors Questionnaire (CFQ) is a structured client-report measure that quantifies the client's perception of therapeutic factors deemed common to effective psychotherapy across all modalities—including alliance, therapist empathy, client agency, goal clarity, and emotional expression. Based on Lambert's contextual model and Wampold's therapeutic relationship framework, the CFQ operationalizes the empirical finding that 70% or more of therapy outcome variance is attributable to common factors (relationship, expectancy, therapeutic environment) rather than specific technique. It is used in research to examine mechanisms of change and to compare common factors across therapy types.