Core outcomes in psychosexual therapy: A feasibility study of the CORE-OM

Abstract

The routine use of an outcome measure in sexual and relationship therapy could help provide the basis for building practice-based-evidence in this area as well as providing information that funders of services are increasingly requiring. The Clinical Outcome in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM)assesses core domains of well-being and is part of a system widely used in the evaluation of the psychological therapies in the UK. The present study sought to establish whether the psychometric properties of the CORE-OM are reproducible in a psychosexual population. Data are presented from nine females and five males who completed the CORE-OM during pre-therapy assessment at a psychosexual clinic and compared with the normative data. The results show that the CORE-OM has acceptable reliability and that the CORE-OM scores for this sample fall between the norms for non-clinical and clinical samples. Scores for all the domains on the CORE-OM were also higher than those for the non-clinical samples. The small sample size militated against over interpretation but the CORE-OM looked a plausible candidate measure with this client group.