Using some of the intake questions we came up with as a class in Week 2, select someone to interview briefly.
Once you have completed the interview, write a Progress Note using either the DAP/SOAP. Please see
What is it about?
A DAP (Data, Assessment, Plan) or SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan) are the two industry
standards of writing notes. It is important to break down the actions and observations of an interaction with a
client versus an analysis and assessment. This helps prevent bias in the note writing and allows others who
read the note to see exactly what happened and perhaps come up with their own assessment.
The Data or Objective piece is to be written about just the observed facts. This is the section where you write
about the intention of your encounter and what is observed. You do not use assumptions in this section. So for
example, if you suspect a client is nervous (an assumption based on observations) you would write the actions
that they did to cause you to assume they were nervous. You might write that “client was sitting in the chair.
She was twitching her left foot and both of her hands at a rapid rate and was looking all around the room. She
did not make eye contact as we spoke.” This section is as if you were explaining action by action of what the
person was doing.