Clinical Significance Analysis
Clinical significance analysis is a method for deciding whether an individual client's change after treatment is not only statistically reliable but also meaningful in real-world terms — specifically, whether the client has moved out of the dysfunctional range and into the range typical of a functional or non-clinical population. Formalized by Neil Jacobson and Paula Truax in 1991, it combines a reliable-change criterion with a clinical cutoff to sort each client into categories such as recovered, improved, unchanged, or deteriorated, complementing group-level statistics that say nothing about individual benefit.
Read the full method
Sign in with a free account to read this section.
Method map
The neighbourhood of related methods — select a node to explore.
Sources
- 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: 10.1037/0022-006X.59.1.12 ↗
- Jacobson, N. S., Roberts, L. J., Berns, S. B., & McGlinchey, J. B. (1999). Methods for defining and determining the clinical significance of treatment effects: Description, application, and alternatives. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(3), 300–307. DOI: 10.1037/0022-006X.67.3.300 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Clinical Significance Analysis of Individual Treatment Outcome. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/social-work/clinical-significance-analysis
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Reliable Change IndexSocial Work↔ compare
- Routine Outcome MonitoringSocial Work↔ compare
- Single-System DesignSocial Work↔ compare
- Standardized Clinical CutoffSocial Work↔ compare