Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation (SCORE-15)

Overview

The Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation-15 (SCORE-15) is one of a group of self-report measures of family processes derived from the original SCORE-40 (Stratton, Bland, Janes, & Lask, 2010). These measures are designed to indicate crucial aspects of family life that are relevant to the need for therapy and for therapeutic change.
The SCORE-15 has 15 Likert scale items and six separate indicators, three of them qualitative, plus demographic information. It records perceptions of the family from each member over the age of 11 years.

Property	Definition	SCORE-15
Reliability	Degree to which respondents in a similar sample had similar scores	No information at present
Internal consistency	Degree to which similar items witing a scale correlate with each other	SCORE had good internal reliability with alpha coefficients for overall scales and subscales above 0.7. Cronbach alphas for the SCORE-15 and SCORE-28 totals were 0.90 and 0.93, respectively (Hamilton, Carr, Cahill, Cassells, & Hartnett, 2015).
Test-retest reliability	Degree to which the same respondents have the same score after period of time when trait shouldn't have changed	SCORE had good test-retest reliability (Hamilton et al., 2015).
Construct validity	Refers to whether a scale or test measures the construct adequately.	Refers to whether a scale or test measures the construct adequately.
Criterion validity	Extent to which a measure is related to an outcome.	SCORE showed good criterion validity, discriminating between clinical and non-clinical cases. (Hamilton et al., 2015).

Suitability

The SCORE is appropriate for use with individuals, couples and full families when the operation of relationships within the family is relevant. It is completed by each person aged 12 years or over privately at the start of sessions. For children aged 8 to 11 years the Child SCORE (Jewell, Carr, Stratton, Lask, & Eisler, 2013) should be used. The developer is currently working on developing a version of the SCORE for adults with learning difficulties.

Translation

Versions are currently available in Finnish; Polish; German; French; Hindi; Greek; Norwegian; Italian; Hungarian; Spanish and Turkish. Further translations into Swedish; Sylheti; Dutch and Flemish; Arabic; and Bengali are currently being undertaken.

Administration

The SCORE-15 should be administered to each family member individually at or just before the start of the relevant sessions. Arrangements should be made so that each person fills it in privately and their completed SCORE is not seen by other family members.

Scoring

The SCORE-15 score can be calculated very simply by hand by working through the following instructions line by line. There is also a facility for entering data from one person into a simple Excel sheet which then calculates the averages automatically.

Interpretation

The potential range of scores is 15 to 75, with a lower score indicating higher family functioning. At this time clinical cut off points are not available because the questionnaire is still being evaluated.

Terms of use

If you are planning to use this measure for the delivery and improvement of health and/or social care, a license to incorporate it into electronic systems can be obtained from NHS Digital. Please note that licenses obtained via this route may be restricted to particular territory (e.g. England, UK). If planning to use the measure outside of England, you may wish to contact NHS Digital to clarify the geographical scope of the licence.

Further information

For more information on scoring and interpreting the SCORE-15, visit the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice website. There are also training videos on the use of SCORE on this website.

References

Hamilton, E., Carr, A., Cahill, P., Cassells, C., & Hartnett, D. (2015). Psychometric Properties and Responsiveness to Change of 15- and 28-Item Versions of the SCORE: A Family Assessment Questionnaire. Family Process, 54 (3), 454-463.

Jewell, T., Carr, A., Stratton, P., Lask, J., & Eisler, I. (2013). Development of a Children's Version of the SCORE Index of Family Function and Change. Family Process, 52 (4), 673-684.

Stratton, P, Bland, J., Janes, E & Lask, J. (2010) Developing a practicable outcome measure for systemic family therapy: The SCORE. Journal of Family Therapy. 32, 232-258