Tools & utilities to support the CORE system

Information written and mounted by Chris Evans on 17.viii.2003, updated 5.viii.2008

What is the CORE system?

The CORE (Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation) system is a system of measures/instruments, and crucially a philosophy and set of tools, to help people use these to monitor routine outcome in psychological therapies. Much more extensive information about it is mounted at the CORE Information Management Systems (CIMS) Ltd. website. CIMS write the excellent CORE-PC and beta release CORE-Net software which provide the most comprehensive support for using the CORE instruments and they also provide support for those programs and for the system generally. A not for profit company: CORE System Trust holds the copyright on the measures.

The CORE system philosophy

The key aim behind the CORE system is to help bridge the researcher/practitioner gap in psychological therapies.

A key part of the philosophy to help this is a "copyleft" attitude to the measures. This means that you can photocopy or otherwise reproduce on paper the measures/instruments provided that you don't:

This does not allow you to copy the text of the measures into computer programs. We (CORE System Trust: CST) have given a five year exclusive licence to CIMS to produce a market quality computer program, which they have done admirably with their CORE-PC program. The exclusive licence has enabled them to have some chance of recovering their costs for the programming, support and distribution.

Translations

We have strict criteria for translations into other languages but are very keen that the measures/instruments are translated or that people explore the issues involved with us. (Do contact me if you want to discuss this). The translated versions have to be copyright to CST and will be made copyleft for photocopying or reproduction on paper exactly like the original measures. Currently an approved translation into Gujarati has been finished and we are various stages of translation, field testing or generation of referential data on the following languages: We are currently involved in getting all of these into elegant PDF format with the derived shortened forms: the SF1 and 2; the CORE-GP (for general population surveys) and the new 10 and 5 item shortened forms for screening and very frequently repeated use.

Dutch, Welsh, French, Kannada, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Saami, Tamil and Japanese, Somali, Arabic, Catalan, Turkish, British Sign Language and Kurdish are all in progress. Email me if you are interested in helping in any way with translations.

Existing publications I've authored or co-authored

  1. Barkham, M., Evans, C., Margison, F., McGrath, G., Mellor-Clark, J., Milne, D. and Connell, J. (1998) The rationale for developing and implementing core outcome batteries for routine use in service settings and psychotherapy outcome research. Journal of Mental Health 7: 35-47.
  2. Mellor-Clark, J., Barkham, M., Connell, J. and Evans, C. (1999). .Practice-based evidence and need for a standardised evaluation system: informing the design of the CORE system. European journal of psychotherapy, counselling and health 3: 357-374.
  3. Evans, C., Mellor-Clark, J., Margison, F., Barkham, M., Audin, K., Connell, J. and McGrath, G. (2000) CORE: Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation. Journal of Mental Health 9(3): 247-255.
  4. Margison, F.R., Barkham, M., Evans, C., McGrath, G., Mellor-Clark, J., Audin, K. and Connell, J. (2000) Measurement and psychotherapy: Evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. British Journal of Psychiatry 177(August): 123-130.
  5. Barkham, M., Margison, F., Leach, C., Lucock, M., Mellor-Clark, J., Evans, C., Benson, L., Connell, J., Audin, K. and McGrath, G. (2001) Service profiling and outcomes benchmarking using the CORE-OM: toward practice-based evidence in the psychological therapies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 69: 184-196.
  6. Evans, C., Connell, J., Barkham, M., Margison, F., McGrath, G., Mellor-Clark, J. and Audin, K. (2002) Towards a standardised brief outcome measure: psychometric properties and utility of the CORE-OM. British Journal of Psychiatry 180(1): 51-60.
  7. Evans, C., Connell, J., Barkham, M., Marshall, C., et al. (2003). Practice-Based Evidence: benchmarking NHS primary care counselling services at national and local levels. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy 10: 374-388.
  8. Ashworth, M., Robinson, S. I., Godfrey, E., Shepherd, M., et al. (2005). Measuring mental health outcomes in primary care: the psychometric properties of a new patient-generated outcome measure, 'Psychlops' ('Psychological Outcome Profiles'). Primary care mental health 3: 261-270.
  9. Lutz, W., Leach, C., Barkham, M., Lucock, M., et al. (2005). Predicting change for individual psychotherapy clients based on their nearest neighbors. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 73(5): 904-913.
  10. Shepherd, M., Ashworth, M., Evans, C., Robinson, S. I., et al. (2005). What factors are associated with improvement after brief psychological interventions in primary care? Issues arising from using routine outcome measurement to inform clinical practice. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 5(4): 273-280.
  11. Sinclair, A., Barkham, M., Evans, C., Connell, J., et al. (2005). Rationale and development of a general population well-being measure: Psychometric status of the GP-CORE in a student sample. British journal of guidance and counselling 33(2): 153-173.
  12. Barkham, M., Connell, J., Stiles, W. B., Miles, J. N. V., et al. (2006). Dose-effect relations and responsive regulation of treatment duration: the good enough level. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 74(1): 160-167.
  13. Cahill, J., Barkham, M., Stiles, W. B., Twigg, E., et al. (2006). Convergent validity of the CORE Measures with measures of depression for clients in cognitive therapy for depression. Journal of Counseling Psychology 53: 253-259.
  14. Lees, J., Evans, C., Freestone, M. and Manning, N. (2006). Who comes into therapeutic communities? A description of the characteristics of a sequential sample of client members admitted to 17 therapeutic communities. Therapeutic Communities 27(3): 411-433.
  15. Lyne, K. D., Barrett, P., Evans, C. and Barkham, M. (2006). Dimensions of variation on the CORE-OM. British journal of clinical psychology 45(2): 185-203.
  16. Palmieri, G., Evans, C., Freni, S., Bajoni, A., et al. (2006). La valutazione routinaria degli esiti della psicoterapia: traduzione e validazione preliminare del sistema CORE (Clinical outcome for routine evaluation). Nuove tendenze della psicologia 4(3): 371-386.
  17. Gampe, K., Biescad, M., Balunova, L., Timulak, L., et al. (2007). A Slovak adaptation of CORE-OM (Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation - Outcome Measure). Czech and Slovak Psychiatry 103(1): 4-13.
Email me if you need reprints of these. Please make it clear which you want and give a snail mail address. There are many, many more publications about and using the CORE instruments and system, see the CIMS website for a much more extensive and regularly updated list.

Support for therapists and services

A central part of our philosophy for the CORE system was our understanding that many users would need support in handling their data. We believe this is ideally provided within "Practice Research Networks" (PRNs). CORE-PC provides superb support for data entry and analysis and for various PRNs based on service type.

Tools & utilities here

We are developing a philosophy for specifics of analysis as so often research analyses are incomprehensible or seem to practitioners to answer questions of no interest or utility for them or their services. At the same time, most practitioners and even most service managers are not very familiar with numerical methods for data analysis. We have a number of presentations and publications in preparation about ways to approach data and our publication (above) about the late Neil Jacobson and his colleagues' "Reliable and Clinically Significant Change (RCSC)" methods. One of the more recent presentations which is available is the powerpoint presentation of the talk I gave at the 2003 Society for Psychotherapy Research international conference in Weimar about good ways to analyse routine psychological outcome data (Mounted 30.vi.03, updated 17.viii.03) and a Word document and the accompanying Powerpoint slides I gave|will give at the 5th Conference on Psychiatric Research in the North, Stokmarknes, Norway, 3.ix.03

I am hoping to provide all the S-plus (and R) scripts that produce the graphics in those talks here shortly. However, for the moment, I have mounted the following rather random resources:

Like almost everything on this website, all these utilities are mounted here licensed under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons License