Modifying the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation Measure for Use with People Who Have a Learning Disability.

Accessible summary This article looks at a simplified version of a widely used assessment tool called Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure (CORE-OM). • The main reason for carrying out this piece of research was to help people with a learning disability understand a simplified version of CORE-OM, and help them tell people how distressed they were feeling. • People with learning disabilities helped us test out the measure in different ways to see if it worked properly. • We found one particular way worked really well, but we will have to check this out with more people to make sure. • The people we tested found the simplified CORE-OM very helpful; they also made some suggestions on how to make it better. We are enthusiastic about developing this, so other people with a learning disability can use the measure in the future. Summary There are few reliable self-report measures suitable for people with a learning disability in reporting psychological distress. This study examines the modification of the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), exploring its reliability, using two different presentation styles. One style included a sequencing task then use of a visual histogram scale to facilitate rating; the other prompted participants to indicate presence or absence of symptoms before using the histogram. The study was conducted on a small sample of people with mental health problems who have a mild learning disability. The modified CORE-OM was found to have an excellent test–retest correlation with the group who completed the sequencing task, then the histogram scale, but the other group produced less favourable results. The preliminary results are encouraging, highlighting the need to conduct a larger study after further modifications of the measure.