Scaling questions: asking and answering them in counselling1

Solution-focused counsellors use “scaling questions” to construct understandings of clients’ concerns and solutions to them. We examine how these questions are asked and answered, offering evidence of what is constructed from within counselling discourse. Also, clients and counsellors offer their retrospective accounts of their participation in question and answer sequences in their dialogues. We conclude by speaking to the implications we see from this research as it relates to collaborative and resourceful dialogue between counsellors and clients.