The evidence for the partners for change outcome management system is insufficient: Reply to Duncan and Sparks (2020).

In their recent article in Psychological Services, Duncan and Sparks (2020) criticize our meta-analysis on the Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS; Østergård, Randa, & Hougaard, 2020) and judge it to be misleading and flawed. This reply points out omissions and mistakes in Duncan and Sparks (2020) and highlights our decisions regarding inclusion criteria, choice of outcome measures, and analytical strategy. We argue that the use of the PCOMS Outcome Rating Scale might inflate effect sizes because of social desirability. Therefore, independent outcome measurement is necessary for a stringent evaluation of the PCOMS as a routine outcome monitoring system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).