HOW TREATMENT SUCCESS COULD BE ASSESSED

The political requirement of quality assurance has been extended to ps ychotherapy, making it necessary to define appropriate criteria of the rapeutic success. Without a theoretical foundation, previous classific ations of various dimensions of success measurement will remain non-ob ligatory. If ''healing or improvement of illness'' is chosen as a comm on therapeutic goal, measurement of success has to be done on several dimensions according to the general conception of disease in medicine. On the dimension ''causes and disease'' there is no alternative to sc hool-specific measures. On the dimension of ''illness/symptoms,'' gene ral symptom measures as well as disorder-specific measures are adequat e. On the dimension of ''consequences/sickness,'' measures across the different schools and disorders based on the sick role and the impairm ent of normal role behavior are possible. The methodology of measuring success includes the operationalization of the several success variab les, the design of data collection and the definition of success crite ria. Detailed proposals regarding these criteria are presented, both f or the assessment of the size and the significance of the change obtai ned as well as for the degree of goal attainment (clinical relevance). Finally, against this background, conclusions for an appropriate meas urement of success are drawn.