ABSTRACT
Chapter 17 addresses debates about how ‘efficacy’ in the arts therapies is understood and researched. It draws on enquiry from a number of countries to consider how clients, therapists and organisations evaluate and communicate the outcomes of the arts therapies. The chapter considers the relationships between efficacy and the framework, or the therapeutic emphasis of the arts therapy. It considers how those practising within a behavioural or analytic framework, for example, draw upon approaches and methods that give them information useful to their approach. This chapter examines examples that give a flavour of the diversity of approaches. It looks at the ways in which dialogues with other disciplines have taken place, as well as some of the new discoveries about efficacy made by innovative arts therapy research.
