S is for Scale Questions: part 2

Scale questions ‘burst on the scene’ relatively late (1). There was no reference to scales in any of Steve de Shazer’s first 4 books and then in his fifth book, Words were Originally Magic (1994) there are more references to Scale Questions than either to Miracle Questions or indeed to Exception questions, these two having starred and taken pride of place in Keys (1985 ), Clues (1988) and even in Putting Difference to Work as late as 1991. Insoo Kim Berg refers to scales slightly earlier, in Family Preservation (1991) and again in Working with the Problem Drinker (1992) and de Shazer and Berg jointly write about scales in their 1993 chapter Making Numbers Talk. The BRIEF team refer to scaling questions in our 1990 book Problem to Solution but it is clear that we do not quite know what to make of them or what to do with them. Scales are not included in that book as a stage in the therapeutic process and indeed are referred to as a ‘task’, ‘we particularly like (de Shazer’s) ‘rating’ task’  (1990, p 11). At that time we were following de Shazer in his upside-down structuring ‘this involves asking clients where on a scale from 10 (being the worst) to 0 (being the best) they think they're at in terms of a particular behaviour or problem, and then asking them where they want to get to. The usual order . . . . .  is reversed by de Shazer to create a rolling down rather than climbing up-hill feeling’ (1990 pp 11 – 12). de Shazer’s ‘rolling down’ to 10 was an experiment we gave up very rapidly, as the number of confused clients grew and grew! So what is it about Scale Questions that meant that they became so central in de Shazer’s practice so quickly?

5 possible reasons:

1. Scales are inherently hopeful. The structure of the question proposes a connection to 10, the best hopes happening, wherever people happen to find themselves on the scale right now. So even if someone were to locate themselves at 1, on a 0 to 10 scale, the questions draws a line, and 9 points on that line take them to 10.
2. Scale questions typically invite people to notice that they are already progressing on their ‘journey’, that they are not at the beginning of that process of change, since the most usual answer in a first session is 3. This ‘noticing’ tends to fit with the building of an expectation that further change is not only possible but likely given that thigs are already better prior to a first session..
3. Scale questions allow people to leverage, to make useful to themselves, the space between 0 and 10. It is not unusual for people to describe their worlds in terms of the extremities – things are good, things are terrible. However even if things are terrible they may not be at 0, they may be at 1 or even 2 and of course the scale allows people to identify and to describe these small differences, whatever it is that tells them that they are at 2, the evidence of what is already working for them.
4. Scale questions turn people’s curiosity to what they have done that has allowed them to progress up their scale – what they have done and are doing that is useful. The change has not just happened. The framework invites a sense of agency and allows people to determine the ingredients, the recipe for progress.
5. Scale Questions offer people a language for talking about subtle, small and hard to define differences. People can tell us that they are at 6 even though it is hard for them to specify exactly and precisely what is different between 4, where they may have been last week, and today.

What is it that we should bear in mind when using scales?

1. It is important to define the scale, what does the top of the scale stand for and what does the bottom represent. When workers ask people ‘so where on a scale are you between (bottom and top)’ it is quite possible that people will answer but of course the question is meaningless since the bottom and top have not been defined.
2. Most practitioners agree that the top of the scale will be called ‘10’ but there is some disagreement about the bottom, should it be called ‘0’ or ‘1’. Practitioners take different positions. Those who favour ‘1’ argue for its hopefulness ‘the client is already at 1’ even if things are ‘the worst things have ever been’. Those who favour ‘0’ prefer people to have the choice of identifying themselves at the very bottom, worried perhaps about the risk of being experienced as ‘solution-forced’ rather than ‘solution-focused’ (Nylund and Corsiglia, 1994).
3. Solution Focused practitioners try to avoid giving language, giving words to the problem. So when defining ‘0’ (or ‘1’ if you insist) it is better to leave the definition vague – ‘O stands for . . . the opposite or the point you were referred or the worst things have ever been or the worst that you can remember things being (Jeff Chang, 2024) or the worst that you can imagine things being’. Giving the problem words that do not emanate from the client allows the client to notice problems to which they had not previously ascribed significance.
4. In Solution Focused Practice practitioners will typically ask retrospective strategy questions rather than prospective strategy questions, ‘how did you do that?’ rather than ‘how are you going to do that?’. Thus when we are asking about ‘one-point up’ on the client’s scale we typically leave the question vague and in our questions we ‘disappear’ the actions taken. So ‘suppose things move one point up on the scale and you find yourself at (wherever they are + 1) how might you know, what might you notice?’. The word ‘find’ shifts attention away from the actions required to make the changes and ‘might’ introduces and emphasises the tentativeness that we invite in people’s answers. They are not committing themselves, they are not action planning, merely beginning to describe some of the possible indicators. We really are inviting the client into the world of possibilities rather than. In Keys (1985) de Shazer repeatedly uses the word ‘spontaneous’ to describe how change happens ‘In order to readily prompt solutions, it is useful to develop a 'vision' or description of a more satisfactory future, which can then become salient to the present. Furthermore, once this "realistic vision" is constructed as one of a set of possible, achievable futures, clients frequently develop "spontaneous" ways of solving the problem’ (de Shazer, 1985, p xvi). (3) We are not strategizing, or inviting the client to do so, merely inviting the client to describe and trusting the client to notice difference ‘spntaneously’.

Discussion:

Scale questions are immensely flexible, anything towards which the client is aspiring can be placed at 10. Scale questions are hugely user-friendly. However we should perhaps note that the more that scales have entered common parlance the more risk there is of the scale being constructed in a way that does not fit Solution Focused Practice. For example practitioners attending trainings will not infrequently argue for their familiarity with scales stating that they use 0 to 10 pain scales. When exploring how the pain scale is used it is not unusual for them to assume that 10 is the worst and 0 is no pain. The scale is used to allow the patient to describe their degree of pain whereas in Solution Focused Practice, in this context, 10 might be anchored as ‘you are managing pain as well as you could hope and 0 is the opposite’, the focus is not the pain but the managing of pain. But of course, however framed, in the end in Solution Focused Practice it is the conversations that we can attach to the numbers that are important rather than the numbers themselves, in other words what the client hears themselves saying when we ask ‘tell me 5 things that tell you that you are 4 and not lower’.

1. When Steve de Shazer first wrote about scales they could certainly be seen as ‘already a legend’ although perhaps not ‘the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond’ of Joan Baez’s song about Bob Dylan, Diamonds and Rust.
2. Despite my strong preference for anchoring the scale with ‘0’ I do acknowledge that the debate ‘0’ or ‘1’ may be as unimportant as the difference in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels between the Lilliputian ‘Big-Endians’ and the ‘Small-Endians’. These were the people who broke their boiled eggs at the big end versus those who broke their eggs at the small end. We should perhaps hold in mind that this difference was associated with a continuous war between Lilliput and Blefuscu that lasted a full ‘six and thirty moons’. We should be careful to respect our colleagues’ choices!
3. Here is a link relating to de Shazer’s use of the work Spontaneous’  https://www.brief.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98spontaneous%E2%80%99.html

 

 

 

Berg, Insoo Kim (1991 and revised 1999) Family Preservation: A brief therapy workbook. London: BT Press.
Berg, Insoo Kim and Miller, Scott (1992) Working with the Problem Drinker: a solution focused approach. New York: Norton.
Berg, Insoo K. & de Shazer, Steve. (1993) Making numbers talk: Language in therapy. In Friedman, S. (ed) The New Language of Change: Constructive Collaboration in Psychotherapy. New York: Guildford Press
Chang, Jeff. (2025) Direct Communication dated 20 March 2025 on https://www.facebook.com/BRIEF.SolutionFocus

de Shazer, Steve (1985) Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve (1988) Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve (1991) Putting Difference to Work. New York: Norton.
de Shazer, Steve (1994) Words were Originally Magic. New York: Norton.
George, E. (2020) Spontaneous https://www.brief.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98spontaneous%E2%80%99.html
George, E., Iveson, C. and Ratner, H. (1990; Revised and expanded Edition 1999) Problem to Solution: Brief Therapy with Individuals and Families. London: BT Press   
Nylund, David and Corsiglia, Victor (1994) Becoming Solution-Focused Forced in Brief Therapy: Remembering Something Important We Already Knew  Journal of Systemic Therapies  Volume 13 Issue 1  5 – 12

 

Evan George
London
23 March 2025.