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Assessing Client Change in Individual and Family Counseling

Case Western Reserve University fischer{at}cwru.edu

This article presents outcome data from an ongoing nonintrusive method for evaluating counseling services. Applied to one agency’s delivery of solution-focused brief therapy, the method is brief and easily integrated into clinical practice. Using two scaling questions (one to measure daily functioning and the other to measure emotional coping), clinicians asked clients in every session to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 their present status on two dimensions. Data were collected by 40 professional counselors providing services to 3,920 cases during a 2-year period, averaging three counseling sessions per case. Analyses demonstrated statistically significant findings for both functioning and coping regardless of the number of sessions and client system (i.e., individual or couple and family). The research demonstrates a clinically useful method for assessing counseling services in process and illustrates the improvements in functioning and coping experienced by clients concurrent within their participation in counseling.

Key Words: family counseling • outcome measurement • self-report data

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