SFA PubList by EBTA

Introduction

Considering the growing interest in the solution-focused approach marked by a continuous increase in published papers with limited access to those outside of academia, in the late 1990s Dr Alasdair Macdonald started the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Evaluation List – an online collection of short summaries and references to empirical research relevant to the establishment and recognition of the approach.

Starting from 2018 the Research Task Group of the European Brief Therapy Association (EBTA RTG) has the privilege and responsibility to continue the maintenance of the list. We also extended it to include not only references to empirical research papers focused on outcome or process but also to papers concerned with theoretical discussions or instrument validation studies which can influence future research or reflect the development of the approach. With this aim, we actively seek to identify and collect references to published papers on the topic of solution-focused approach as it is applied, researched, or discussed in various settings, contexts, and countries with no language restrictions, as long as at least an abstract is available online.

The list contains references and links to publications on the solution-focused approach regardless of the field of application, i.e., therapeutic, educational, coaching, etc. The references are added to the website and categorized (by study/paper type, methodology, and research design for quantitative, respectively analysis method for qualitative studies) for a more convenient search or analysis.

The publications are identified by using Google Scholar alerts and searching academic databases, such as EBSCO, Science Direct, Scopus, and others. To be included in the SFA PubList by EBTA, a publication has to fall into one of the following categories:

  1. original empirical research on outcome, process, or examining links between variables, regardless of the methodology used;
  2. reviews, regardless of the methodology used;
  3. theoretical discussions or presentations of practice or intervention methods;
  4. measurement instruments’ development or validation.

Notes:

  • The list is not an exhaustive one and includes only publications accessible to the EBTA RTG. If you have published an article or have come across one that is not on the SFA PubList by EBTA, please, send the reference with a link to: research@ebta.eu.
  • The SFA PubList by EBTA is free to use. Please give credit by citing the correct name and link of the list each time you use it for research, analytical or other purposes.

Contributors:

  • We thank the people who contributed to creating and maintaining the list in the past: Alasdair Macdonald, Dmitry Stebakov, and Evgeniya Kuminskaya.
  • Special thanks to Marie-Carmen Neipp and Mark Beyebach for giving us permission to update the SFA PubList by EBTA by using their collection of papers included in their review paper: Neipp, M-C., Beyebach, M. (2022). The Global Outcomes of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: A Revision. The American Journal of Family Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2022.2069175
  • The current contributors and maintainers are: Andreea Żak, Rytis Pakrosnis, Elena Lavrova.

SFA PubList by EBTA

SFA PubList by EBTA

The List at a glance (last updated June 2025):

A total of 979 papers, published between 1975 and 2025;

  • 746 empirical studies, including 585 outcome, 71 process-outcome, 63 process, 16 correlational and 11 measurement validation studies. 555 studies used quantitative, 116 – qualitative, and 75 – mixed research methods:
  • Within the quantitative methodology there were 84 RCTs*, 216 experiments**, 113 quasi-experiments***, 109 single-group studies****, 40 case-studies, 34 cross-sectional, 16 longitudinal and 1 Delphi study;
  • Within the qualitative methodology there were 30 thematic analysis, 26 case analysis, 24 content analysis, 12 micro-analysis, 10 narrative analysis, 10 phenomenological analysis, 8 discourse analysis, 3 grounded theory analysis, 4 action research, and 5 generic studies.
  • 76 reviews, including 48 systematic reviews (among them 21 meta-analyses, 4 meta-syntheses, 21 descriptive and 2 bibliometric), 13 – Scoping, 10 – traditional and 5 overviews.
  • 157 theoretical papers: 31 presenting conceptual discussions, 23 – intervention development and 103 describing practice.

* RCT = Randomized Controlled (Clinical) Trial – specified by authors as such in the article’s title, abstract or methods section. Usually considered as a golden standard in efficacy studies and defined as an experimental design in which, after recruitment and assessment of eligibility, participants who have a specific disease, disorder or other condition are randomly assigned to an experimental/intervention group or to an active control group that will receive an alternative intervention, treatment as usual (TAU), placebo or other active control. Randomized clinical trials are randomized controlled trials performed in the clinical settings (APA, 2018; NIH, 2014).

** Experiment – an experimental design using any type of control group (passive or active) and random assignment to an experimental/intervention and a control group (APA, 2018) but not specified by authors as RCT in the article title, abstract or methods section.

*** Quasi-experiment – an experimental design using any type of control group (passive or active), in which assignment to an experimental/intervention group or a control group is not randomized but is usually based on self-selection or selection by an administrator (APA, 2018).

****Single-group – a single-group pre-to-post-intervention assessment design with no control group.

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