Other client-completed measures and tools to use in psychotherapy
In addition to measures such as CORE and SCORE, there are a range of client-completed outcome and process measures as well as other research tools that psychotherapists can use in their work. One of the advantages of using well established measures and tools is that other people will be using them too and data can be pooled and analysed. However, not everyone will want to reflect on their own practice using formal measures and just keeping systematic records of clients' demographic characteristics, how often they are seen, observed changes in clients and theories for why these changes are occurring are also valuable. The information that follows provides some options if you want to understand your practice better using established measures and research tools.
The Network for Research on Experiential Psychotherapies (NREP) has a good website that provides information and links about researching experiential and humanistic therapies (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/index.html). There is lots of information here about psychotherapy outcome and process measures that clients (and therapists) can use eg:
Helpful Aspects of Therapy Form (Clients). This questionnaire asks clients to record the most helpful events in the therapy session as well as other helpful and hindering events (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments.html#HAT).
Brief Structured Recall (Clients and Therapists). This tool provides therapists and clients with a structured recall process in which they can identify significant change events in therapy (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments/elliott/bsrover.html).
Revised Session Reactions Scale (Client). This allows clients to report on the experienced effects of each therapy session (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments/elliott/rsrs.html).
Change Interview (Client) is a qualitative interview that explores what the client thinks has changed as a result of therapy, how they understand those changes and other helpful and hindering events (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments/elliott/changei.html)
Simplified Personal Questionnaire (Client) is a tool for gathering a list of problems that the client wants to work on in therapy, stated in the client's own words (http://www.experiential-researchers.org/instruments/elliott/pqprocedure.html)
Other potentially useful resources are:
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire is a brief behavioural screening questionnaire for children and young people aged 3yrs - 16yrs. It can be found at: http://www.sdqinfo.org/
OQ Measure is a US-based self report outcome questionnaire for clients and is available at: http://www.oqmeasures.com/page.asp?PageId=78
Outcome Rating Scale is designed to assess areas of life functioning know to change in therapy. This can be found at: http://www.scottdmiller.com/?q=node/6
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