Validity of Clinician’s Self-Reported Practice Elements on the Monthly Treatment and Progress Summary

An increased demand for accountability in community mental health systems has resulted in a need for valid, reliable measures of therapeutic practice. The Monthly Treatment and Progress Summary (MTPS), developed through the Hawaii Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division, is a clinician-report measure that describes therapeutic practices, treatment targets, and progress ratings for each treatment case. The current study evaluated the validity of the therapeutic strategies reported on the MTPS by comparing coder- and clinician-reported use of practices. Using 47 audio recordings from 19 youths’ therapy sessions, trained observers reliably coded 12 discrete practices. Four of the 12 practices were found to be valid according to clinician–coder agreement (intraclass correlations ≥0.60). The coding system was revised, utilizing extensiveness and experiential scales, and 100 % of practices were valid according to clinician–coder agreement. Practical use of the MTPS, implications for service systems, and future directions for research on the MTPS are discussed.