Benchmarking 1 Running Head: BENCHMARKING CLINICAL SETTINGS EFFECT SIZES Using Clinical Trials to Benchmark Effects Produced in Clinical Practice

This paper proposes an intuitive yet statistical advancement of the benchmarking method (e.g., Weersing & Weisz, 2002) that could facilitate the assessment of pre-post treatment effectiveness of psychotherapy and other interventions delivered in clinical settings against efficacy observed in clinical trials. Primary development was in the use of the “good-enough principle” (Serlin & Lapsley, 1985, 1993), which allowed for setting a clinically relevant margin between the benchmarks and the effect sizes observed in clinical settings so as to avoid attaining statistical significance with clinically trivial differences. Examples are given using clinical trials benchmarks of adult depression treatment, followed by instructions and limitations for its use.