Scaling Questions: Four Steps on One Number

How you ask scaling questions

Use scaling questions in therapy only after the client has named the preferred future in their own words. Trepper and colleagues (2010), writing for the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association, put the scale after the goal or the miracle question, not before it. Their manual traces the model to work by de Shazer and by Berg. The number is the client’s. Yours does not replace it.

Define the ends before you ask for the mark. The manual uses 0 to 10 or 1 to 10. In the progress scale, 0 is when the appointment was arranged, and 10 is the day after the miracle. In their couple example, 1 is as bad as the problem has been and 10 is perfect communication. The husband called 10 unrealistic. The therapist agreed it was the ideal, then asked what number would mean therapy had succeeded. Both wanted an 8. Ask that question. Do not spend the hour defending a 10 the client has already refused.

Trepper and colleagues (2010) name three jobs for the scale. It is a measure you can repeat next session. It makes the client’s evaluation matter more than yours. And it turns the talk toward what is already working, because a number above the floor has something in it. Franklin, Zhang, Froerer, and Johnson (2017) included 33 studies in a systematic review of solution-focused process research. The most empirical support was for strength-oriented techniques, compared with other techniques, and for the co-construction of meaning. They said current studies need replications with larger samples and experimental designs that study the process in relationship to outcomes. The four questions are how you run the scale. They are not an outcome guarantee.

Rate

• Step: Rate
• Question: Where are you now, once the ends are in the client’s words?
• Filled example: Sam’s 0 is the week of the first call. Sam’s 10 is a Monday with no dread in the car. Today is a 4.

Write the number they said. If you heard a 3 and they said 4, the 4 stands. The manual is explicit that the client’s evaluation outranks the therapist’s. A revised number is your mood score wearing their name.

What puts you there

• Step: What puts you there
• Question: What is already in this number that a lower one would not have?
• Filled example: Breakfast, and the Saturday text. Sam can point at the minute. “I am coping better” is not a minute.

If the number is higher than last week, ask how they did it and get one example. Trepper and colleagues (2010) follow a rise from 4 to 5 by asking how communication was better, then interrupting for the scene: the daily call, the longer listen, the idea that helped. If the number holds, ask how they kept it from going down. That question often surfaces a change they had not counted. If it drops, ask what they did to keep it from dropping further. Coping is still material. A lower number is not a failed week.

One point higher

• Step: One point higher
• Question: What would the next number up include that this one does not?
• Filled example: A 5 is leaving before noon. An 8, the number Sam would call success, is not today’s question.

The manual’s couple moved one point in a week, and that one point was the change to describe. The same manual states that small increments of change lead to large ones. I still ask for the 10 when I am anxious about a 4. Cross it out before you speak. The next number is the work. The success number is the horizon, and you already have it.

What would show it

• Step: What would show it
• Question: What would you notice, and what would someone else notice, at the next number?
• Filled example: Keys in hand by 11. The friend’s phone lights up before the meeting.

Trepper and colleagues (2010) use a noticing sequence when a goal is still a feeling word. How will the client notice things are better, what will other people notice, and how will those people behave differently? Attach that sequence to the next number. A 5 with no picture is a score. The picture is the keys, the text, the door. If you need the Tuesday in words before you put a mark on it, use the counseling session questions and come back for the number.

Confidence is not the same number

Trepper and colleagues (2010) keep three scales in the work, not one. Progress is how close the client is to the preferred future. Confidence is whether they believe they can find a solution, or do the next small piece. Motivation is how much they want the change. Averaging a 4, a 6, and an 8 into a 6 throws away the only useful gap.

The manual also notes that solution-focused work shares some pieces with motivational enhancement interviewing. If the hour is about whether they want the change at all, leave the progress scale and use the motivational interviewing questions. Do not borrow an importance ruler and call it the Sunday number.

Confidence

If confidence is low on a step they just described, shrink the step rather than lecture. Ask what a one-point rise in confidence would include. Often it is a smaller version of the same act: shoes on by 11, not out the door by 11.

Motivation

If motivation is a 3 and progress is a 6, stop pushing the next behavior. They are already doing more than they want. Ask what the 3 is protecting. If motivation is an 8 and confidence is a 3, the want is not the problem. Shrink the step until confidence can move one point.

When you skip the scale

Skip scaling questions when you have not anchored the ends. A bare “how are you, 1 to 10” is a mood score. It does not tell you what a 5 would show.

Skip them when the client cannot use numbers, or when the number has become a grade they perform for you. If they watch your face before they answer, you have a compliance task. Put the pen down. Ask for the scene first, with one question from the open-ended questions for therapy guide, and return to the scale only if a number would still help.

Skip them as a substitute for a risk question. If the client refers to suicide, violence, or abuse, ask the direct question your protocol requires. A scale can sit beside that question. It cannot collect the fact, and it cannot replace the protocol.

A 0 is still a conversation. Ask how they kept it from going lower, or how they got themselves to the session. Trepper and colleagues (2010) treat “how did you keep it from going down” as a way into exceptions, not as a consolation prize. Get one scene. Then stop. Do not stack a miracle question on top of a floor just to have a higher number in the note.

A 10 is also a conversation. Ask what they are doing that they want to keep, and what would tell them it is holding next week. Do not add a problem so the scale has somewhere to go.

Copy the next scale

Before you ask scaling questions, write the ends in the client’s last words if you have them. In the room, ask one question. Wait. The second question, asked before the first answer lands, is how you lose the scene.

One number for progress. If you also need confidence or motivation, give each its own line. Do not collapse them.

Where the other questions take over

Scaling questions are the mark and the next small picture. When you need a different kind of question, opening, processing, or closing, use the therapy questions guide. Pick one move. Do not run a library in the chair.

When the answer is a trait and you need a minute, the open-ended questions for therapy guide is the rewrite. Come back here only after you have a scene you can put a number on.

When the work is whether they want the change, the motivational interviewing questions hold that conversation. A progress scale asked to an ambivalent client produces a polite number and no next step.

When you need the Tuesday before the mark, the counseling session questions are the picture. A scale without that picture is a score. A picture without a scale is a hope you cannot track next week.

If you want the number and the scene in the note without retyping them after the hour, session documentation can sit beside the scale. You still choose the question. The record stays under your review.

Educational content for licensed clinicians. Adapt every line to formulation, culture, risk, and supervision. These questions do not replace your crisis protocol.

Download the Therapy Questions Practice Pack

The Therapy Questions Practice Pack is a three-page planning tool: a purpose selector and an open-or-closed choice grid, a six-check calibration and rewrite worksheet, timing and state checks with repair stems, and a supervision audit for question habits. Use the purpose selector when you are about to ask for a number and a reflection would do the job. Use the rewrite worksheet when the line you almost said was “how are you, 1 to 10” with no ends attached. The four questions on this page are the scale. The file is for the question you were about to add on top of them.

Do not fill it out in front of the client as a score of how scalable they were. It is for your preparation and for supervision.

References

• Franklin, C., Zhang, A., Froerer, A., & Johnson, S. (2017). Solution focused brief therapy: A systematic review and meta-summary of process research. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 43(1), 16-30.
• Trepper, T. S., McCollum, E. E., De Jong, P., Korman, H., Gingerich, W., & Franklin, C. (2010). Solution focused therapy treatment manual for working with individuals. Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association. https://andrews.edu/ceis/gpc/faculty-research/coffen-research/trepper_2010_solution.pdf