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Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Reliable Change Index× | Routine Outcome Monitoring× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Social Work | Social Work |
| Family | Process / pipeline | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 1991 | 2001 |
| Originator≠ | Neil S. Jacobson & Paula Truax | Michael J. Lambert and the patient-focused/measurement-based-care tradition |
| Type≠ | Statistical index of whether an individual client's change exceeds measurement error | Systematic repeated measurement of client outcomes to inform ongoing care |
| Seminal source≠ | Jacobson, N. S., & Truax, P. (1991). Clinical significance: A statistical approach to defining meaningful change in psychotherapy research. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(1), 12–19. DOI ↗ | Lambert, M. J., Hansen, N. B., & Finch, A. E. (2001). Client-focused research: Using client outcome data to enhance treatment effects. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69(2), 159–172. DOI ↗ |
| Aliases | RCI, Reliable Change Index (Jacobson-Truax), Jacobson-Truax Reliable Change, Reliable Change Criterion | ROM, Measurement-Based Care, Outcome Monitoring, Progress Monitoring |
| Related | 4 | 4 |
| Summary≠ | The Reliable Change Index (RCI) is a statistic that tells whether the change in an individual client's score on a measure, from before to after an intervention, is large enough that it is unlikely to be an artifact of the instrument's measurement error. Introduced by Neil Jacobson and Paula Truax in 1991 as one half of their two-part definition of clinically significant change, it converts a pre-post difference into a standardized value and compares it against a critical cutoff, typically 1.96, so that practitioners and researchers can classify each client as reliably improved, unchanged, or reliably deteriorated. | Routine outcome monitoring (ROM), also called measurement-based care, is the practice of repeatedly administering a validated outcome measure throughout a course of treatment and using the resulting data to track each client's progress, compare it against an expected recovery trajectory, and adjust care when a client is not improving as predicted. Pioneered in psychotherapy by Michael Lambert's patient-focused research and now standard in behavioral health and social work, it turns outcome measurement from a one-time research activity into a continuous clinical feedback loop that demonstrably improves outcomes for clients who would otherwise deteriorate. |
| ScholarGateDataset ↗ |
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