Special Issue on Measurement-Based Care
Morton, Hannah Elaine
Hi all,
Passing along the call below that may be of interest:
Recent Advances and Diverse Applications and Extensions of Measurement-Based Care
Call for Papers for Special Issue in Psychotherapy
Issue Co-Editors: James F. Boswell, Michael J. Constantino, Alice E. Coyne, and Matteo Bugatti
Measurement-based care (MBC; also referred to as routine-outcome monitoring [ROM] and feedback and feedback-informed treatment [FIT]) has emerged as an evidence-based practice that improves client outcomes (Barkham et al., 2023) and serves as a lynchpin for practice-oriented research (McAleavey et al., 2024). In 2015, Psychotherapy published a special issue on MBC, anchored by a series of articles showcasing unique ROM and feedback systems. In the closing section of his capstone special issue commentary, Wampold (2015) stated, “The purpose of this comment was to present the challenges that exist so that ROM can reach its potential. I look forward to watching ROM mature” (p. 461). By many accounts, MBC has indeed matured (and expanded) over the past 10+ years since this sentiment, as exemplified by the publication of a Professional Practice Guideline from the American Psychological Association (APA, 2025) and other key syntheses (Boswell, 2022; Muir et al., 2019). In line with this, the goal of this special issue is to highlight recent advances, as well as diverse applications and extensions of MBC, which mark its rapid maturation and future promise for advancing more effective and patient-centered clinical practice.
Rather than present specific MBC/ROM-feedback systems as was done in the 2015 special issue, this updated special issue seeks to highlight empirical advances in MBC development, testing, and implementation. Such research can include novel applications and extensions of MBC/MBC tools to inform care decisions at multiple levels (individual client, therapist, and/or system) and time-scales (within-session, between-session, and/or across full courses of treatment). We are also interested in studies that demonstrate developments in establishing and improving the validity of MBC tools and strategies for diverse groups of clients and therapists.
We are open to a plurality of research designs. Please review the information on the Psychotherapy website to learn about typical design and reporting expectations. The following is a non-exhaustive list of manuscript types and topics that would be considered a good fit for the issue:
- Novel applications and extensions of client-, therapist, and/or system-level measurement-based care data
- Advances in machine learning/artificial intelligence that enhance the nature, applicability, personalization, and precision of monitoring and feedback
- Mixed-method research that demonstrates strategies for enhancing the clinical utility/actionability of feedback (i.e., evidence-based strategies for how to be responsive to a particular “not-on-track” patient)
- Innovative strategies for implementing measurement-based care tools and feedback mechanisms in routine clinical practice and training settings
- Predictors, moderators, and mediators of the effectiveness of MBC at the client, therapist, or systems levels
The following manuscript types and topics are unlikely to be considered a good fit for the issue:
- Reviews of a specific MBC/ROM-Feedback system
- Process-outcome studies that draw on a large amount of routinely collected MBC data but are not directly related to MBC applications
- Narrative review articles of the MBC/ROM evidence base
Submissions will be evaluated in two phases. First, interested authors should submit by December 1, 2025 an Abstract of no more than 500 words. This document should be submitted via email as a Word file attachment to the special issue co-editors, with the subject line indicating it is for the special issue call. The Abstract, which will be reviewed for fit to the issue, should include the following sections: background (description of the study aims and how it is a fit for the special issue topic), methods (description of the sample, design, and measures), results (summary of the primary findings or a description of the analyses to be conducted), and conclusions (description of how the study sets the stage for the “next generation” of MBC). Second, the authors of good-fitting Abstracts will be invited to submit a full manuscript through the journal’s portal for masked peer-review. Such submissions should follow the Psychotherapy guidelines for authors. The deadline for final manuscripts is September 1, 2026. Note that an invitation to submit a full manuscript does not guarantee acceptance. Please direct any questions to the section co-editors.
Please direct any questions to the issue co-editors: James F. Boswell (jbos...@albany.edu), Michael J. Constantino (cons...@umass.edu), Alice E. Coyne (co...@american.edu), and/or Matteo Bugatti (matteo....@oregonstate.edu)
Hannah E. Morton, PhD (she/her)
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Assistant Professor
TEACCH Autism Program
Department of Psychiatry
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill