Progress Monitoring Measures: A Brief Guide

There is much evidence to suggest that psychotherapy is effective, however, it is far from flawless (e.g., Lilienfield, 2007; Stuart, 1970). As the field of mental health changes, there has been a recent movement in routine practice toward the use of standardized measures to track client progress and to collect feedback about treatment response (Lambert & Shimokawa, 2011). The use of standardized tools can help practitioners identify when clients are not progressing in therapy and have been linked to better outcomes for nonresponsive clients than when these measures are not used (e.g., Shimokawa, Lambert, & Smart, 2010). The purpose of this article is to introduce a group of such tools, referred to as progress monitoring (PM) measures, and to highlight features relevant in selecting and implementing a PM measure in practice. Areas covered include domains assessed, target populations, administration, scoring, feedback and interpretation, cost, training and privacy. While there exist numerous outcome and assessment measures (e.g., Froyd, Lambert, & Froyd, 1996), this article focuses specifically on seven popular progress monitoring measures for adult mental health populations, that are brief, comprehensive and easily accessible tools designed to be used to monitor change throughout the therapeutic process.