Assessing Compliance With Homework Assignments: Review and Recommendations for Clinical Practice  Nikolaos Kazantzis Massey University  Frank P. Deane University of Wollongong  Kevin R. Ronan Massey University Despite the emphasis of homework assignments in psychotherapy research and practice, methods to assess homework compliance have been rela- tively neglected. This article presents a brief review of 32 studies that described the assessment of homework compliance, and evaluated home- work compliance in relation to treatment outcome. More than half of the studies relied on a single source of compliance data ( n = 23), eight stud- ies involved retrospective accounts, and only four studies used the same measure of homework compliance. The vast majority of studies focused on the assessment of “homework compliance” without consideration of the “quality of homework completion” or other key factors. A more com- prehensive framework for homework compliance is discussed, and a new Homework Rating Scale (HRS) is proposed as the first step towards as- sisting the field in a more reliable and valid assessment of homework compliance. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 60: 627–641, 2004. Keywords: homework assignments; homework; compliance; assessment; clinical practice Nikolaos Kazantzis, School of Psychology (Albany Campus) and Waitemata District Health Board Cognitive Therapy Center; Frank P. Deane, Department of Psychology and Illawarra Institute for Mental Health; Kevin R. Ronan, School of Psychology (Palmerston North Campus). The authors thank Michael E. Addis, Michael J. Bryant, David D. Burns, Keith S. Dobson, Irene Elkin, Mike Startup, and Michael Tompkins for helpful discussions on the methodological issues surrounding the assess- ment of compliance (or adherence) in psychotherapy. Preparation of this article was supported in part by Massey University Research Award PR56786.1207 MURF to Nikolaos Kazantzis. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Nikolaos Kazantzis, Ph.D., School of Psy- chology, Massey University at Albany, Private Bag 102904, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand; e-mail: N.Kazantzis@massey.ac.nz. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 60(6), 627–641 (2004) © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.10239