Outcome Measures and Evaluation in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Sections of this page

Details

Evans, C., & Carlyle, J. (2021). Outcome measures and evaluation in counselling and psychotherapy (1st ed.). SAGE Publishing.
Paperback ISBN: 9781473906730
Hardcover ISBN: 9781473906723
SAGE page

Discount and ordering

SAGE are giving a 25% discount on the book if you use discount code “UK23AUTHOR” at https://ombook.psyctc.org/SAGE or at ebooks.com.

Available from

Email update list

We now have an Email list giving updates about the book but mostly about work around and arising from the book, signup here.

Events

Launch event

The UK chapter of the Society for Psychotherapy Research kindly hosted a free web launch event for the book on Wednesday 9/2/22 hosted by Charlie Duncan and Afra Turner of the SPR(UK) steering group. There is a recording of the presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1rKnueVKHA and here are the slides and a summary of the Q&A with responses, and, courtesy of a screen shot from Clara Paz, here’s how it looked at one point in the presentation:

Presentation in UDLA (Universidad de Las Américas) Psychology week in Latin America

This was primarily for Psychology students and staff in UDLA in Ecuador but had simultaneous translation into Spanish and the invite shared with SPR members and others in Latin America and was joined certainly by people from Brazil (I so admire people who can follow something in probably their third language) and from other countries in LA. It was considerably shortened by initial technical problems in Quito but the Q&A questions were spot on and we will be following up with more free events through UDLA we hope and possibly a free, open, ongoing discussion meeting: work in progress. I will put the presentation and the recording (in Spanish only) here when we have the latter.

Reviews and comments

So far we are only aware of the lovely commendation on ResearchGate from Barry McInnes of Therapy Meets Numbers. Do let us know if you have found other public feedback, comments or reviews or have written a review. We promise to list all of them here.

Informal recommendations

Barry has followed his earlier approval with this lovely comment:
In their new book Outcome Measures and Evaluation in Counselling and Psychotherapy, authors Chris Evans and Jo-anne Carlyle have pulled off a rare feat. In making some important statistical concepts accessible, presenting ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments for measurement in a balanced way, and leading the reader through a range of implementation scenarios, they have written the guide I wish I’d read twenty five years ago. In fact, they’ve written the book I wish I’d written myself. If you have no other guide to outcome measurement and evaluation in psychological therapy on your bookshelf, make sure you have this one. (In his Therapy Meets Numbers blog heading up a guest post from me, but I didn’t pay him: honest!)

Formal reviews

None yet that we know. Do tell me if you know of one (I will mount pointers to all regardless of approbation or condemnation I promise!)

Resources here to complement the book

This will be mostly down to me (Chris) but with input on particular topics and some oversight from Jo-anne. The glossary got moved here to help meet the word limit for the book but having it online allows it to be an evolving resource.

  • Glossary: work in progress, 260+ entries and climbing. There is a link in each entry to Email me if you have questions or suggestions but that won’t tell me which entry you are in when you do contact me so make sure to tell me that.
  • Perhaps most useful to practitioners, managers and researchers wanting tools to help understand numbers in papers and reports and to look at their own numbers: my shiny apps. These include very simple apps that give you confidence intervals around reported statistics or calculate RCI and CSC values but will now (March 2024) include apps that analyse your own data which can be uploaded in a number of formats.
  • PSYCTC.org site and resources (many have individual cross-links from chapters below)
  • CORE site (managed by C with much information about the CORE system)
  • For people who want to do their own data crunching and using or willing to learn the R system: my R “SAFAQ”: Self-Answered Frequently Answered Questions relating the free, open source R statistical system which I now use for all my data crunching. See the “welcome” and the “use” pages as steps into that.

Chapters

The links below take you to information about what is in each of the chapters, including all figures. Increasingly, the chapter pages will have supplementary materials: coloured figures, R code, links to other resources.

  • Intro (pp. 1-3)
  • Part I: Outcome measures and evaluation
    • Chapter 1. An introduction to outcome measures and evaluation (pp. 7-15)
  • Part II: Outcome measures
    • Chapter 2. A framework for outcome measurements (pp. 19-30)
    • Chapter 3. How to judge the quality of an outcome measure (pp. 31-46)
    • Chapter 4. An overview of outcome and change measures (pp. 47-60)
    • Chapter 5. Analysing change data from outcome measures (pp. 61-83)
  • Part III. Evaluation – applying outcome measures in practice
    • Chapter 6. Planning an outcomes exploration: design and be SMART (pp. 87-97)
    • Chapter 7. Outcome measurement for individual practitioners (pp. 98-117)
    • Chapter 8. Service-level change and outcome measurement (pp. 118-134)
    • Chapter 9. Working with clients and supervisors when using outcome measures (pp. 135-145)
  • Part IV. Communication and critique
    • Chapter 10. A ‘snapshot’ review: Constructive critique as a core practitioner skill (pp. 149-163)
    • References (p.164-164)
    • Index (p.166-170)
  • Online glossary

Figures

Table of all figures from the book.
Additional figures: in due course I’ll add graphs that expand on those in the book.

Corrections & suggestions

Contact me if you find issues or have suggestions for the book or supplementary materials.

Last updated 25/03/2024, author CE; licence for text here (but not the book!): Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).