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!

G

GAD-2

"GAD" stands for "Generalised Anxiety Disorder" and this is the two item short form from…

GAD-7 (General Anxiety Disorder – 7)

A seven item self-report questionnaire covering the previous two weeks based largely on the DSM-IV…

Gaussian ("Normal") distribution

This is the famous "bell shaped curve" which maps the probability of a score as…

Gender

Gender is gender: male or female! Details Of course it's not! First of all…

Gender categories (in quantitative research)

For so many decades this was binary: male and female. For an increasingly well…

Generalisability

Crucial idea, first letter in our GULP acronym. Means what the word says: are…

GHQ: General Health Questionnaire

There are a suite of self-report mental health questionnaires that started with the GHQ-60 which…

Glasgow Anxiety Scale

In full the Glasgow Anxiety Scale for people with an intellectual disability (Mindham, J., &…

Glasgow Depression Scale

In full, the Glasgow Depression Scale for people with a learning disability (Cuthill, F. M.,…

Goal attainment scaling

GAS is a methodology for valuing and systematically identifying the specific goals of an individual…

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.