Client Change Scale—Rater Training Examples
Imagine you are an interviewer or counselor working with an array of client problems. You make a statement or
have approached a case in a certain way. Then the client responds to you in one of five different ways:
Level 1. Denial. The client seems unable to accommodate new data from the counselor or therapist. The client
will fail to deal with the conflict or contradiction, makes an abrupt topic shift, or shows a clearly incorrect “off–
the-wall” response.
Level 2. Partial examination. The client deals with only a portion of the issue or counselor’s statement. The
client may over-generalize, delete, or distort what has been said, but not as seriously as in Level 1. You may
find irrational ideas and some blindness to problems.
Level 3. Acceptance and recognition, but no change. The client recognizes the situation as it is, and the client’s
comment, feeling, or thought seems close to that presented by the therapist, but nothing new is added by the
client. This level characterizes homeostasis or no change. Score as Level 3 if the client tends to describe a
situation, event, or self-picture fairly clearly but tends to leave it there.
Level 4. Generation of a new solution. In response to the counselor, the client moves to the creation of
something new. The client has added something that was not there before. At times, the underlying conflict may
remain—acceptance of insoluble problems begins here.
Level 5. Development of new, larger, and more inclusive constructs, patterns, or behavior—transcendence. The
client has arrived at a new synthesis, a new way of thinking, behaving, or feeling. These are relatively rare
moments in counseling and therapy and may represent the development of useful or important insights, the
ability to engage in a truly new way of behaving, the generation of a new ability to engage emotionally.
You will now be given a variety of counselor-client situations. The possible client responses are in random
order. Please match each client response to one of the five levels of the Client Change Scale (CCS).
Instructions: Read the following counselor-client situation and classify the following Client responses to the
appropriate level of the Client Change Scale (CSS).
Career Choice
Counselor: (To student who was referred by his engineering professor for failing grades.) John, we’ve gone
through the tests and reviewed your work history. Given all the information we’ve come up with, how do you
put it together?