Conference Agenda

This presentation outlines qualitative and quantitative strategies for assessing narrative therapy and dialogical self‑therapy in ways that respect their relational, context‑sensitive nature. Formal quantitative assessment anchors changes in symptom and functioning domains using routinely collected measures such as the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale (BASIS‑32), the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, and standard mood and anxiety scales. Pre–post and longitudinal designs compare trajectories for people engaged in intensive narrative/dialogical work with those receiving treatment‑as‑usual, allowing estimation of statistically and clinically significant changes in psychosis, depression, anxiety, interpersonal functioning, and hospitalization rates. These approaches have demonstrated greater improvement on BASIS‑32 scores for inpatient units implementing daily narrative groups and broad symptom reductions and fewer rehospitalizations in narrative psychotherapy compared with conventional CBT for psychosis. Complementing these metrics, qualitative methodologies—narrative inquiry, phenomenology, and case‑based analysis—document how people re‑author identity, reframe voices or anomalous experiences, and reconstruct relationships and community participation. Data sources include in‑depth interviews, participant and therapist field notes, and longitudinal case narratives that trace changes in meaning, agency, and preferred stories over months to years. Informal, practice‑proximal indicators such as session attendance, voluntary engagement, reduction in crisis contacts, and spontaneous reports of restored roles (parenting, education, employment, cultural responsibilities) are tracked as markers of “recovery of function in the ordinary world.” Mixed‑methods designs integrate these strands within individuals and cohorts, using qualitative data to interpret quantitative shifts and to capture transformations that cannot be reduced to symptom scores. We argue that such multi‑layered assessment preserves the dialogical, culturally grounded character of these therapies while still producing rigorous, communicable evidence of effectiveness for clinicians, systems, and policymakers.