Target Complaint Scaling

Target complaint scaling is an individualized outcome measure in which the client names the specific complaints that brought them to treatment, each complaint is rated for severity at the outset and again at follow-up, and the change in those ratings indexes improvement. Introduced by Carolyn Battle, Jerome Frank, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins in 1966, it grounds outcome measurement in the client's own presenting problems rather than a fixed questionnaire, making it an early and influential model for person-centered, idiographic outcome assessment in psychotherapy and social work.