Outcome Questionnaire 45

Playoff format for football to change in 2012

A new playoff system will forever alter the landscape of Missouri high school football when the 2012 season begins. The final week of the regular season becomes the most critical week, and two Lake of the Ozarks football coaches are excited for the change.

As a 45-year veteran, retiring Camdenton Lakers head coach Bob Shore can recall the days before Missouri had football playoffs. He guided Camdenton through the old "point system" days in the 1970s and 1980s. The new playoff format that goes into effect following the 2011 season includes a point system, but the points will only determine the seeding of 8-team districts.

"As a coach, you try to find what's positive. One of the things thats positive is you win one game, you go to the postseason," Shore said.

Under the new format, teams will be allowed to schedule their first nine games of the season as they see fit, and will be awarded points from each game determined by outcome and the strength of their schedule. Unlike the point system of the past, the formula only determines seeds for an 8-team district tournament that begins in the tenth week of the season.

"This will just determine your seeding, so it shouldn't have much effect," Shore said. "Some coaches are leery of that, but when we went in 1988 to district assignment football where you played your three district games — that year we had five state championship games. Three of those (championship-winning) teams would not have been in the state championship in the old system."

Shore supported the 4-team districts and was one of the most vocal coaches who successfully lobbied for two teams from each district to enter the playoffs, a change that came about in 2008.

"The good, positive part of it is you still have ten games, so now I think the part that will be good is that now you have an 8-team district you're taking the same amount of people (to the playoffs)," Shore said.

MSHSAA made the change to the playoff and scheduling format for football after distributing a survey to coaches around the state. Still, the April 29 announcement of a final decision caught some coaches by surprise, and triggered some negative feedback.

"Anytime you have change there is going to be some opposition," School of the Osage head football coach Dan Henderson said. "People were scrambling, not really knowing what was going on. I wish it would have went ahead and went to a vote. It went off a questionnaire. That was kind of disappointing, just the way that all went down, but they think that's what's good for kids. We're going to take it and play with it.

The greatest thing i have ever written « Pseudoserious

Abstract

Prior research in individual therapy has provided evidence that therapists are poor predictors of client outcome without the aid of objective measures and often misjudge clients’ perceptions of the therapeutic relationship.  The focus of the current research was to conduct a similar predictive study in a group setting. Group therapists from a university counseling center and a state psychiatric hospital were recruited to test their accuracy in predicting client outcome, quality of therapeutic relationship and their own use of empirically supported group interventions.  135 total group members participated in the study.  Results indicated that therapists are poor predictors of all three providing support for the implementation of measure-based feedback systems in order to inform therapist about key information that may affect the effectiveness of groups.

Clinical Prediction in Group Psychotherapy

A series of randomized clinical trials (RCTs)  have shown that providing therapists measure-based feedback on client outcome status (reliable symptom improvement, no change or reliable symptom worsening) has a positive impact on final treatment status; especially for clients who are not responding to treatment (Harmon et al, 2007; Hawkins, Lambert, Vermeersch, Slade, & Tuttle, 2004; Lambert, Whipple, Smart, et al., 2001; Lambert, Whipple, Vermeersch, et al., 2002; Berking, Orth, & Lutz 2006).  However, research examining the effect of providing similar feedback in group psychotherapy remains limited.   Given the large numbers of clients served in the group psychotherapy setting, commencing similar research in a group modality would represent an important step forward in psychotherapy research.

The current study was viewed  as a pilot to a larger RCT that would test  the effects of using outcome and clinical support feedback in groups. Specifically, it tests the usefulness of outcome-based feedback in tandem with information regarding client perception of the therapeutic relationship in the group.  In order to provide context for the study, what follows is a brief review of RCTs testing the effectiveness of outcome and process feedback on improving therapy outcomes from the individual literature.  Specific focus is given to RCTs conducted using outcome feedback from the OQ 45 (Lambert, M. J., Hansen, N. B., Umphress, V. J., Lunnen, K., Okiishi, J., Burlingame, G. M. et al., 1996).  The OQ 45 was also chosen due to its status as the only outcome feedback system to have been the subject of large-scale RCTs, and because it has been repeatedly studied and developed with the conjunctive use of clinical support tools (CSTs). (Slade, Lambert, Harmon, Smart, and Bailey 2008; Harmon et al, 2007; Hawkins et al, 2004).  Given the demonstrated effectiveness of the OQ 45 feedback system, we attempted to adapt a similar system for group work in the current study, consisting of outcome and process feedback along with an intervention-based clinical support tool.

The use of psychological testing for treatment planning and outcomes assessment

Developing and Delivering Practice-Based Evidence, A Guide for the Psychological Therapies

Psychotherapy Relationships That Work, Evidence-Based Responsiveness

Outcome Measurement in Mental Health, Theory and Practice

The Use of Psychological Testing for Treatment Planning and Outcomes Assessment