Core outcomes in psychosexual therapy: A feasibility study of the CORE-OM

Abstract

The routine use of an outcome measure in sexual and relationship therapy could help provide the basis for building practice-based-evidence in this area as well as providing information that funders of services are increasingly requiring. The Clinical Outcome in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM)assesses core domains of well-being and is part of a system widely used in the evaluation of the psychological therapies in the UK. The present study sought to establish whether the psychometric properties of the CORE-OM are reproducible in a psychosexual population. Data are presented from nine females and five males who completed the CORE-OM during pre-therapy assessment at a psychosexual clinic and compared with the normative data. The results show that the CORE-OM has acceptable reliability and that the CORE-OM scores for this sample fall between the norms for non-clinical and clinical samples. Scores for all the domains on the CORE-OM were also higher than those for the non-clinical samples. The small sample size militated against over interpretation but the CORE-OM looked a plausible candidate measure with this client group.

Keywords:

• CORE-OM
• psychosexual therapy
• outcome measure
• psychometric properties

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a 1 + 3 ESRC studentship and presented at the North of England Joint Research Forum for Human Sexuality, Porterbrook Clinic, Sheffield (November 2003). The authors are grateful to Dr Peter Trigwell, Associate Medical Director of Liason Psychiatry, Leeds General Infirmary, and Sandra Coburn and Andrew Yates, Nurse practitioners, Psychosexual Medicine, Leeds General Infirmary, for their assistance with this research. In addition, the authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article.