The current investigation is part of a work in progress aimed to analyze the process of change and the outcome of brief psychotherapies in patients of Brazilian communitarian health units. Specifically, the current work aimed to explore a method to determine clinically meaningful change of symptoms evaluated by self-report measures, when normative data are not available. It consists in the specific use of the well-known Jacobson and Truax's method to determine the clinical significance of a treatment. To calculate the change scores and cutoffs of symptomatic measures, data from a sample of college students were used as representative of a functional population. Changes of one psychotherapeutic process were analyzed. Results suggest that clinical significance of change can be reliably determined by self-report measures. Some limitations of this method are considered.
Psychoterapy; Brief psychotherapy; Self report; Outcome and process assessment (Health Care)
