In this blog post we’ll ask you what proportion of your clients improve, stay the same, and deteriorate. We’ll be inviting you to take part in another brief, anonymous, survey to share your thoughts. We’ll then publish the results and contrast them with the results of a 2012 study which asked the same question, as well as some of the improvement benchmarks we have from published research.
Table of contents
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Which clients improve and which don’t? Can we rely on judgement alone?
Clients come, and clients go. They pass through our therapy rooms, and they go on their way.
With some, we can point to tangible improvement by the end. Sometimes astonishingly rapid, at others more like hand-to-hand combat, but tangible improvement nonetheless.
With others, not so much. Sessions accumulate, but nothing seems to shift the dial in their mood or functioning. Some, despite our best efforts, seem to deteriorate.
Some clients tangibly improve, some show little or no change, and others deteriorate. Looking at your clients in the past year or two, what proportions would you say fall into each category? Equally important, would your clients agree?
Why is this important? Quite simply, we know that most professionals are prone to self-assessment bias. Can we therefore be safe relying on judgment alone when it comes to assessing the degree to which tangible improvement has occurred for our clients?
How many of your clients improve?
In recent blogs we’ve questioned the notion that as a profession we’re immune from self-assessment bias. It seems that we’re as prone to it as every profession so far studied.
This raises a further question that was asked in the 2012 study we referenced previously. It’s about whether we’re able to accurately assess the proportions of our clients that improve, show no change, and deteriorate.
With that in mind we’re inviting you to take part in one further brief, anonymous, survey to help us to find out. It should take no more than a minute of your time to complete.
We’ll ask you what proportion of your clients improve, stay the same, and deteriorate. We’ll then publish the results and contrast them with the results of the 2012 study, and some of the improvement benchmarks we have from published research.
About the survey and how to take part
Taking part in this anonymous survey couldn’t be simpler. Simply click on the link below and you’ll be taken to a Google Survey page. We’ll ask only the following questions:
- How do you describe yourself professionally?
- How long have you been practising as a therapist?
- What percentage (0–100%) of your clients do you know or estimate get better (i.e., experience significant symptom reduction) during treatment? What percentage stays the same? What percentage gets worse?
- Is your response to the last question based on:
- Your ‘felt sense’ (which may include feedback from clients).
- Data from your use of outcome measures.
- Other
We’ll leave the response window open for ten days, and shortly after that we’ll publish the results in a further blog post.
The survey should take no more than a minute of your time, so why not click the link below and complete the survey now?
Thank you, and we look forward to receiving your responses!
