ABSTRACT
One of the things that practitioners observe in their everyday clinical work is that clients are more likely to benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy if they apply adaptive skills and techniques between sessions. Homework assignments are the vehicle by which these skills and techniques are transferred to the client’s natural environment, thereby facilitating the “outwards focus” of the therapeutic approach (Beck, 1976; Blackburn & Twaddle, 1996). In the same way that we encourage our clients to collect empirical data to test out ideas or beliefs, researchers have sought to collect empirical data to test out the theoretical foundations upon which homework is based.
