HGI Practice Research Network

MEASURES

There are dozens of different measures available in counseling and psychotherapy. We are recommending the use of the measures discussed on this website as we feel they offer the right mix of consistency, feasibility and clinical value. Furthermore, they are free of copyright in their paper format.

For more detail about considerations in choice of measures please click here

ORS/SRS              CORE          IES-E        

Agreement on measurement instruments:

The choice of research instruments and measures is an important aspect of research. Measures need to have the qualities of validity and reliability. However, this is frequently a trade off with feasibility, ease of use and clinical significance. The HGI PRN wishes to promote good practice through the encouragement of therapists to adopt suitable measures that are highly relevant to their work as well as being acceptable as research tools.

ORS/SRS

These ultra brief measures have been designed to provide useful information regarding the 2 most robustly documented findings in counseling and psychotherapy:

1. Early change is predictive of good outcomes
2. A good alliance between therapist and client is a major contributor to the variance of change.

The ORS and SRS measures are designed for use at the beginning (ORS) and end (SRS) of every session. Both of these scales have been developed by the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change (ISTC). We encourage all counsellors and psychotherapists to become interested in outcomes. Following registration with the ISTC these forms can be downloaded at no charge and used in personal practice. Counsellors and Psychotherapists wishing to register now with the ISTC please click here.

Sample ORS                                                      Sample SRS

On-line training in the use of ORS/SRS is available here.

CORE

IMPORTANT:
In recent months we have been working collaboratively with the CORE team to better understand the climate around outcome informed psychotherapy and counselling research as it applies curently in the UK. We wish to express our thanks to them for all their support and guidance, including permission to reproduce some of their copyrighted slides in some of the training presentations. Further information about the CORE system, details of training in the use of CORE etc. is available at www.coreims.co.uk.

The CORE System Group has been working for many years in the development of a quality research system for evaluation, audit and outcome benchmarking of psychological services. The paper versions of CORE are available worldwide and free to use. The sophisticated CORE PC software is a very powerful tool that allows in depth analysis of the entered data. The CORE Net system will allow a paperless system to be utilized by the end user, with access provided over the internet. This is perfect for a diverse group of practitioners working in varieties of settings and, indeed, even in different countries.

To obtain all the CORE documentation please go to:

http://www.coreims.co.uk/forms_mailer.php where you may register and download all necessary forms free of charge

A sample of the CORE outcome measure can be viewed here.

A sample of the CORE therapist assessment form can be viewed here.

IES-E scale

At times it proves very useful to have a separate scale to measure trauma. The Impact of Events, Extended, Scale (IES-E) is a validated, psychometrically tested scale designed by Noreen Tehrani. This scale provides reliable clinical scores to help assess the level of distress due to the impact of a traumatic event or events. We are very grateful to Noreen for granting us permission to publish her scale. For your own copy of this scale please click here.

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