title: Evaluating the Responsiveness to Therapeutic Change with Routine Outcome Monitoring: A Comparison of the Symptom Questionnaire-48 (SQ-48) with the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45).
abstract: Assessment of psychological distress is important, because it may help to monitor treatment effects and predict treatment outcomes. We previously developed the 48-item Symptom Questionnaire (SQ-48) as a public domain self-report psychological distress instrument and showed good internal consistency as well as good convergent and divergent validity among clinical and non-clinical samples. The present study, conducted among psychiatric outpatients in a routine clinical setting, describes additional psychometric properties of the SQ-48. The primary focus is on responsiveness to therapeutic change, which to date has been rarely examined within psychiatry or clinical psychology. Since a questionnaire should also be stable when no clinically important change occurs, we also examined test-retest reliability within a test-retest design before treatment (n = 43). A pre-treatment/post-treatment design was used for responsiveness to therapeutic change, comparing the SQ-48 with two internationally widely used instruments: the Brief Symptom Inventory (n = 97) and the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (n = 109). The results showed that the SQ-48 has excellent test-retest reliability and good responsiveness to therapeutic change, without significant differences between the questionnaires in terms of responsiveness. In sum, the SQ-48 is a psychometrically sound public domain self-report instrument that can be used for routine outcome monitoring, as a benchmark tool or for research purposes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message The SQ-48 is developed as a public domain self-report questionnaire, in line with growing efforts to develop clinical instruments that are free of charge. The SQ-48 has excellent test-retest reliability and good responsiveness to therapeutic change or patient progress. There were no significant differences in terms of responsiveness between the SQ-48 and BSI or OQ-45. The SQ-48 can be used as a routine evaluation outcome measure for quality assurance in clinical practice. Providing feedback on patient progress via outcome measures could contribute to the enhancement of treatment outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ingrid V E
authors.initials: IV
authors.lastname: Carlier
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Viktória
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kovács
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martijn S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: van Noorden
authors.affiliation: Clinical Centre for Body, Mind and Health, GGZ Breburg, Tilburg, The Netherlands.|Tranzo Department, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: van der Feltz-Cornelis
authors.affiliation: Psychiatric Institute, GGZ inGeest, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Nanda
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mooij
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Yvonne W M
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Schulte-van Maaren
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Albert M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: van Hemert
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Frans G
authors.initials: FG
authors.lastname: Zitman
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Erik J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Giltay
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000553:Ambulatory Care; D015331:Cohort Studies; D000066498:Emotional Adjustment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011613:Psychotherapy; D057566:Self Report; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI); Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45); Psychological Distress; Psychopathology; Responsiveness; Symptom Questionnaire-48 (SQ-48)