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The Process-Bases Assessment Tool (PBAT) is freely available and downloadable

The PBAT is a tool for understanding why your psychological interventions work. It is designed for practitioners in all areas, including clinical psychology, coaching psychology, social work, positive psychology, counselling, family systems, and etc. Our goal is to support people all over the world to use the PBAT to improve their outcomes. The PBAT is evolving and we will update and expand the item pool, to serve your interests. Most importantly, the PBAT will always be free to use.

If you are a practitioner, the PBAT will help you to:

  • Tailor your interventions. Why is an individual failing to thrive, experiencing poor mental health, or poor social relationships? The PBAT can tell you where they are struggling and hint at what you might do to help them.
  • Know what is and is not working. As a practitioner, if you are producing positive change in an individual, what are you changing? What is the “process” that you are improving? What processes are not improving?
Download the PBAT and outcome measure

Evidence-base for the PBAT

Ciarrochi, J., Sahrda, B., Hofmann, S., & Hayes, S.C. (2022). Developing an item pool to assess processes of change in psychological interventions. The process-based assessment tool (PBAT). Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science,23, 200-213.

  • PBAT has been shown to distinguish between positive and negative processes. Thus , people may engage in both positive and negative behavior. We can both hurt our relationships and help our relationships on the same day, indeed sometimes in the same five minutes
  • PBAT links in theoretically coherent ways to need satisfaction and thwarting. People who score high on the PBAT tend to experience satisfaction in their connection, competence, and autonomy.
  • The PBAT links to clinically relevant outcomes of sadness, anger, anxiety, stress, lack of social support, vitality, and health.

Sanford, B.T., Ciarrochi, J., Hofmann, S.G., Gates, K.M., & Hayes, S.C. (in press). Toward empirical process-based case conceptualization: An idionomic network examination of the process-based assessment tool. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science.

  • In this study, the PBAT and items assessing common clinical outcomes were assessed repeatedly in 50 individuals in an experience sampling format over a 35 day period yielding at least 60 measurement occasions per person.
  • Analyses showed that the PBAT related to common clinical outcomes for virtually all participants in the individual complex networks analysis.
  • Data showed that relationships had to be studied at the individual level because participants’ responses did not always conform to the group average. Not all processes where beneficial to everybody.
  • The PBAT was able to identify person-level developmental trajectories, i.e., what was driving well-being for different individuals.
Download the PBAT and outcome measure