Motivational Interviewing has many very simple and useful techniques designed to help clients move forward in the direction of positive change. One of these is called “Importance Scaling”.
Here’s how it works.
Clinician: Think about _____________change we have been discussing. Now let me ask you on a scale from 0 to 10, in which 0 is not at all important, and 10 is the most important, what number would you give yourself to describe how important this is to you?
Client: It’s not very important. I’d say a 4.
Clinician: That’s very interesting. Why did you say 4 and not 0?
The answer to this question is change talk, the client talking about change and not you. You are underscoring the fact that this change does, in fact, have some importance to the client.
Clinician: What would have to happen to make your score a couple of points higher? That is, what would have to happen to make this more important to you?
The answer, once again, is change talk. One of our roles in MI is to elicit change talk. We know from research, as well as our own experience, that when the client is talking about change, it’s much more powerful than when we are talking about it.
In one of my recent trainings, a participant asked if we could suggest that the client think about this when they leave the session. The score might change with further thought, and you could ask the client about that when you see them next. I think that’s a great idea!
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Ellen Glovsky, PhD, RD, LDN 2012. All rights reserved.
