Cut-off Scores and Clinical Change Indices for the Dutch Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45) in a Large Sample of Normal and Several Psychotherapeutic Populations

The Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45; Lambert et al.,) has been designed for frequent assessment of a patient's functioning during the course of psychotherapy and has become one of the most frequently used outcome measures in the Netherlands. The OQ-45 was originally normed on outpatients in secondary care only, but is applied in a wide variety of patient populations. As such, it has become increasingly important to provide cut-off scores with the normal population, as well as between different patient populations. The present large-scale Dutch study aims to provide cut-off scores between several populations. Data were collected from the normal population (n = 1810) and patients in five different treatment settings: outpatient primary care (n = 1581), outpatient secondary care (n = 9433), private practice (n = 457), day patient (n = 481) and inpatient therapies (n = 485), a total of more than 14.000 administrations. Reliable change indices and cut-off scores were calculated using the method of Jacobson and Truax (). The reliable change index for the patient population was calculated as 18 and the cut-off between the normal and patient population as 56. Sensitivity, specificity and area under the curves of cut-off scores between the normal population and the treatment settings were satisfactory and generally higher than 0.80. Between the patient populations, these measures were generally too low for strict use. The OQ-45 total score can satisfactorily discriminate between the normal and patient populations. For assignment to specific treatment types, the OQ-45 may help, but its use is somewhat limited in practice. Copyrigh