OM book glossary

This is the glossary for the book “Outcome measures and evaluation in counselling and psychotherapy” written by myself and Jo-anne Carlyle and available now from SAGE. I am over 430 entries now and still climbing though now (April 2026) I am concentrating more on harmonising, cleaning up and cross-linking existing entries than I am on adding new ones. 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 if you are searching, the way that the plugin 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 word or phrase you typed in to find is hidden further down the list of suggestions. As of 29.ix.26 the plugin authors are aware and working on this.

As to the content, if a topic 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!

B

Barplot / bar plot

See Histograms and barplots.

Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)

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

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)

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

Bereavement, grief, loss

Why am I putting this here when it's obviously either too simple to need expansion…

Between group(s) comparison

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

Between groups tests

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

Bias

Bias is anything that that results in a conclusion or finding that is not the…

Bifactor models

A subset of factor analytic models, not to be confused with 2-factor models. Details As with all…

Binomial distribution

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

Blinding

Blinding refers to concealing or masking group allocation in controlled trials. For example, participants are…

More

Creation date lost, last updated 19.ix.26. Author CE; this page and all glossary contents are copyright to me so contact me if you want to quote from them (I’m sure I’ll agree!). That may change to a Creative Commons licence later when I am happier with the content.