OM book glossary

This is the glossary, over 300 entries and climbing, for the book “Outcome measures and evaluation in counselling and psychotherapy” written by myself and Jo-anne Carlyle and available now from SAGE. Some glossary entries link to more detailed expansions of the topic in my Rblog and, at last, an increasing number now link with interactive online (“shiny”) apps.

You can see the alphabetical list of entries below which is a good place to browse, or you can use this search box.

Beware: the way the search orders the matches is to my mind bizarre so scroll down if what you typed isn’t first on the list, you may find something with exactly the title that is exactly the phrase you typed in to find is hidden down the list of suggestions.

If what you want is not there and you think it should be, contact me and tell me and I will put it on the (long!) list of entries to be added!

A

Abstracteeism

A neologism created by Branca Sa Pires and leapt upon by me in one of…

Attenuation (by unreliability of measurement)

This is the very basic reality that if you have unreliable measures of things, and…

Accuracy

What it means in everyday language really. It's one of two parts of observational…

Average absolute deviation (AAD)

This is generally used to describe a family of measures of dispersion, i.e. of the…

Alpha

First letter of the Greek alphabet. OK, OK, I know you knew that! It…

Anderson-Darling test

A good test of distribution fit. (That's a graphic from my Rblog post about…

Alternative (alternate) hypothesis

The logical alternative to the null hypothesis in NHST (Null Hypothesis Significance Testing). At…

Attrition

Technical term used in research that involves repeated assessments including the whole field of repeated…

Anonymisation

This sounds obvious doesn't it and it also seems obvious that clients, and research participants,…

Authenticity Scale (AS)

A twelve item self-report therapy change scale created to reflect Carl Rogers' ideas of authenticity…

B

Between group(s) comparison

What it says! Actually, when you see it, it what is really being done…

Bonferroni correction

This is the simplest way to "correct" for the multiple tests problem. Details Read the multiple tests…

Binomial distribution

This probably doesn't come up directly all that often in the therapy/MH literature but it…

Bootstrap methods

A computer intensive statistical method mainly used to obtain robust estimates of confidence intervals around…

Boxplot (or box plot)

Sometimes also called a "box and whisker plot". This is a excellent way to…

Barplot / bar plot

See Histograms and barplots.

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)

Perhaps the most famous and successful therapy self-report instrument ever. Started with the paper…

Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)

The BAI is a (Beck, A. T., Epstein, N., Brown, G., & Steer, R. A….

Bulimia Investigatory Test Edinburgh (BITE)

The BITE is a questionnaire which, as its name suggests, is designed to measure typical…

Between groups tests

The complement to paired, or within person tests. See Paired tests and Between group(s)…

C

Classical Test Theory (CTT)

This is one of the two main statistical/mathematical approaches to quantitative psychometrics of the last…

Confidence intervals (CIs)

This is an incredibly useful method. The basic idea is that when you have a…

Chaos, chaos theory

Arts therapists, like many artists and other "creatives" argue that creativity, i.e. the emergence of…

Convergent validity

Part of concurrent validity (q.v.). Convergent validity is evidence that data from a measure…

Concurrent validity

Literally evidence supporting the validity of a measure that is obtained from data obtained at…

Crown-Crisp Experiential Index (CCEI)

Hm, I thought this would be quick and easy but I think it's going…

Composite scores

What it says: making up a score by adding up other things. Despite that…

Centring/Centering

A bit esoteric but you may meet it in reports, particularly those using multi-level modelling…

CORE-14-DD

This is a convenience name for the presentation together of 14 items of the CORE-OM…

Clinically significant change (CSC)

Part of the "Reliable and Clinically Significant Change (RCSC)" methods developed by Jacobson et al. Details I…

D

Domains, dimensions, components and factors

This is my way of clarifying some terms that are often thrown around in psychometrics….

Dose response

One of too many terms that have been pulled across from physical health medicine and…

Descriptive statistics

This covers statistical methods of summarising a dataset that aim only to summarise the data…

Divergent/discriminant validity

With convergent validity, this is part of concurrent validity, it's whether values on a measure…

Data protection

Well of course you'd look after your data wouldn't you? You don't want anyone…

Dispersion

I've been putting this off! It's actually quite a basic idea but it covers…

Diagnosis

Clearly the idea comes out of medicine and what is sometimes called "the medical model"…

De-anonymisation

Synonym of re-identification, see, anonymisation, pseudonymisation, confidentiality and smallest identical subset for more on this…

Distribution shape

It's useful to think of distributions of continuous variables in terms of their "central location",…

Discrete measures/variables

A variable that can only take distinct values. Examples might included the locality within a…

E

Exploratory data analysis (EDA)

A statistical approach, methodology, inspired by John Tukey. Tukey was something of a polymath…

EQ-5D-5L

Probably the dominant quality of life measure, distributed by Euroqol and free for non-commercial use…

Eating attitudes test (EAT)

Two self-report questionnaires designed to tap into problematic attitudes common in eating disorders. Details The…

Employee assistance programmes (EAPs)

These are programmes offering some degree of support with mental health and well-being issues for…

Effect size

Effect size measures are a way to separate the strength of an effect. An…

ePROVIDE

Online repository of outcome/change measures (their term is "Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs)" and related information…

Error

Mistake, transgression. OK, not that use of the word! For MH/therapy change measurement…

Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function (ECDF)

A cumulative distribution the "empirical" indicates that is based on data not on the definition…

Early termination

Like "attrition" a seemingly polite term for opting out that hides the client's autonomy and…

Ethnicity

A key sociodemographic variable in many countries. Interestingly, it's illegal to collect data on…

More

Page last updated 19.v.24 to add the new BetterDocs “encyclopedia” listing of entries. Author CE, page and all glossary contents are copyright to me. That may change to a Creative Commons licence later when I am happier with the content.