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We asked you to rate your skills and performance compared to your professional peers. You told us, and we compared your responses to those from a 2012 study which asked the same question. Despite some startling differences between the two, however, still very few of us seem prepared to entertain the possibility of being below average.

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Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Why this survey, and why now?

Higher degrees of professional humility have been shown by research to be associated with better outcomes. That being the case, doesn’t it seem important that we as therapists have a realistic view of our own skills and performance, and how they compare with others? 

In a classic study of self-assessment bias among mental health professionals published in 2012, Steven Walfish found that none of the 129 survey respondents rated their skills and performance as below average. Seventy-five percent rated themselves as being in the top 10% for performance.

Knowing what we know now about the link between professional humility and outcomes, we were keen to know if anything has changed in the intervening years. So, we ran a survey asking the same question as the earlier study.

The Therapy Meets Numbers survey 2025

This was the question:

Compared to other mental health professionals within your field (with similar credentials), how would you rate your overall clinical skills and performance in terms of a percentile (0–100%, e.g., 25% = below average, 50% = average, 75% = above average)?

We also asked: a) How do you describe yourself professionally? b) How long have you been practicing as a therapist? c) Where in the world are you located?

The survey was posted in the last TMN blog, as well as Facebook and Linked In therapy forums, and X (formerly Twitter). Fifty-two of you were good enough to respond – a big THANK YOU to you.

We’ve crunched the numbers and compared your responses to those given by respondents to the earlier study. What do you imagine we found? Is a largely UK-based sample going to look different from a US one? Thirteen years on, have we developed a little more humility, or perhaps read the research on self-assessment bias and therapist outcome variability?

Below:

1. Our respondent profiles: location; professional title; length of practice experience.
2. How respondents rate their skills and performance, and how those compare with the 2012 survey. Spoiler alert: some changes are quite startling.
3. Differences within respondent profiles. For example, do psychotherapists rate themselves more highly than counsellors?  Do higher performance ratings come with experience?
4. Speculations on what lies behind differences in self-perception between 2012 and now. 

Our 2025 respondent profile

Where in the world are you located?

Most of you (88%) are in the UK. Of the others, four are located in Europe, one in Asia and one in India.

How do you describe yourself professionally?

Those describing yourselves as counsellors (23) were the largest professional grouping, with psychotherapists the next largest at 18.  

How long have you been practising as a therapist?

The forty-six percent of you (24) that indicated you’d been practising between 10 and 20 years formed the largest group. You were followed by 14 indicating 6 – 10 years (27%) and 11 indicating more than 20 years (21%). There’s a lot of experience in this cohort.

2012 and 2025: What’s different, and what stands out?

Overall, respondents to our current survey rated their skills and performance significantly lower than those in the 2012 study.

The average respondent rating for the earlier study was the 80^th percentile (in other words higher than 79% of peers). In our study the average rating was 21 points lower at the 59th percentile.

In the 2012 study the modal (most common) rating, was the 75^th percentile, compared with the 50th percentile in the current study. This value was selected by 15 (29%) respondents.

Whereas 25% of respondents in the 2012 study rated themselves as at or above the 90^th percentile, the figure in our study was just 2%. The difference in the proportions rating themselves below the 75^th percentile was even starker – just 8% in the 2012 study and 81% in the current survey.

Finally, in contrast with the 2012 study, where no respondent rated themselves below the 50^th percentile (below average), the figure in our study was 10%.

Differences between group segments

Within each of our groupings (location, professional title and length of practice experience) were there discernible differences between segments? Did psychotherapists, for example, rate themselves more highly than counsellors? Or did higher performance ratings come with experience?

There weren’t enough non-UK respondents to enable comparison between the UK and other locations, but what about professional title and length of practice experience? 

Counsellors v Psychotherapists

Did one of these two professional groupings rate their skills and performance more highly than the other?

In short, no. There wasn’t even a cigarette paper between them at the 58^th percentile each. Those that described themselves as psychologists, though numbers were smaller, had an average rating of 56%.

Length of professional practice 

Were there differences in self-ratings related to respondents’ length of practice experience? Did those with greater experience rate their skills and performance more highly? 

The numbers are small, but the answer to this question again seems to be ‘no’. We’ve included all the response options here, and excepting the one respondent with less than two years of experience, there’s not much difference in average ratings.

In this cohort greater experience does not equate to a higher appraisal of skills and performance. If anything, the slightly lower ratings of those with the most experience suggests the opposite might be true.

Why the differences (and the similarities)?

Differences are most apparent, and some starkly so, when comparing the ratings of the 2012 study and our current survey. While we can’t definitively know what accounts for these differences, we can speculate:

1. Location of respondents. Somewhat risky, but we’ve assumed that the study published in 2012 was based exclusively or largely on US-based respondents, whereas our survey was predominantly UK-based. What difference this might make we’ll leave you to speculate on.
2. Professional profile of respondents. The 2012 sample (n=129) was comprised of psychiatrists (9.3%), psychologists (26.4%), professional counsellors (21.7%), clinical social workers (28.7%), and marriage and family therapists (14%). Whether those groupings reported different self-ratings sadly isn’t reported.
3. Level of research awareness. We didn’t ask survey respondents how they came to be aware of our survey, so we don’t know what proportion of them would be regular readers of the TMN blog.

If they were then they’re very likely aware of research we’ve profiled over the years on outcome variability, and the association between higher levels of professional humility and superior outcomes.

It’s probably also reasonable to assume that, whether respondents are TMN blog readers or not, there’s now a significantly higher awareness generally of these issues in our field.  

What combination of these and other factors account for the differences in our self-assessments between 2012 and now may need (as is so often said) more research!

The fact remains that very few respondents rated themselves as below average in our survey – just 10% rated themselves below the 50^th percentile.

We probably shouldn’t be surprised by this. It’s hardly comfortable to think that we might be below the average of our peers. An interesting question to ponder is how many respondents are measuring their outcomes, and to what extent their responses are informed by their data.

This is a subject we’ll be returning to in our next blog, so stay tuned.

Tell us what you think

We’d love to have your thoughts on what you’ve just read. Are you surprised? Are you reassured or alarmed? What other factors might be at play that explain the differences we found? Has your assessment of your own level of skill and competence changed over the time you’ve been practicing? If so, in which direction and what’s led to that shift?

Please comment below and as ever, thank you!

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