Making sense of CORE System data: Attrition, effectiveness, concordance and information capture

Abstract

The value of outcome research has been the subject of recent debate. This paper argues that outcome research is a worthy and crucially important activity and goes on to describe four practice-based studies addressing questions about effectiveness. The four studies were all conducted in a department of psychological services employing counsellors, clinical psychologists, cognitive-behavioural practitioners and psychotherapists. The studies used CORE System data to answer questions about attrition, effectiveness, concordance and information capture. The paper argues that the systematic collection of such data can be used by managers and individual therapists to monitor and improve services. The CORE System allows a unique benchmarking system and the paper demonstrates how this can be used to locate a service in a wider context.

Keywords:

• Effectiveness research
• CORE System
• attrition
• concordance
• benchmarking

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Trish Van-der-Velde, Mira Mojee and Frances Scrutton for administering CORE and conducting studies using CORE data in our department.