Therapeutic Assessment With Children: A Pilot Study of Treatment Acceptability and Outcome

Abstract

Therapeutic Assessment (TA) with children is a hybrid of psychological assessment and short-term intervention. It uses the ongoing process and results of psychological assessment to enhance parents' understanding of their child and to facilitate change. Clinical reports and single case studies suggest that TA with children is an acceptable and effective brief intervention. However, no aggregate data have been published to support this claim. This pilot study investigated the acceptability and preoutcome–postoutcome of TA with 14 clinically referred children with emotional and behavior problems and their parents. Results indicated high treatment acceptability as well as significantly decreased child symptomatology and enhanced family functioning as reported by children and mothers. In addition, mothers demonstrated a significant increase in positive emotion and a significant decrease in negative emotion pertaining to their children's challenges and future. The findings, although limited due to the design and small sample size, support assertions from published single case studies that TA is possibly an efficacious child and family intervention for children with emotional and behavioral problems and should be studied in a larger, comparison design.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Drs. Marita Frackowiak and Carol V. Middelberg for their supervision and consultation; to all the student members of the Therapeutic Assessment Project at the University of Texas; to the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health in Austin, Texas, for grant support; and to Pearson Assessment for in-kind support.