Describes problems in implementing placebo controls in psychotherapy including the difficulty of ensuring that therapists and their patients will view both the experimental and placebo treatments as comparably credible. Considers six research issues stemming from the definitional requirement that the placebo control for the critical and specific…

Discusses issues to consider when investigating behavioral effect of foods, including idiosyncratic response to particular food, necessity of identifying individual sensitive to food being studied, necessity of including washout phase, consideration of withdrawal effects, assessment of change, dietary challenge, and time parameter necessary for…

Discusses methodological problems involving use of MMPI by reviewing past literature. MMPI is so easily used that it is sometimes misapplied or data obtained from it are incorrectly analyzed by researchers unfamiliar with its limitations or peculiarities. Suggestions for improving research design are made. (Author/BEF)

An examination of the scientific basis of both control group designs and comparative designs in outcome research reveals that comparative designs generally have fewer threats to validity and provide a more efficient means of control for nonspecific treatment factors suggesting that comparative studies warrant a larger role in the study of…

Methodological problems associated with treatment research on cigarette smoking are explored, and possible solutions are discussed. The main problems considered are the selection and retention of subjects, the measurement of smoking, the design of treatment studies, and the interpretation and generalizability of experimental results. (Author)

Questioned the statistical analyses of the Moleski and Tosi investigation of rational-emotive therapy versus systematic desensitization. Suggested means for lowering the error rate through a more efficient experimental design. Recommended a reanalysis of the original data. (LLL)

Discussed methodological errors in child and marital treatment research. Made suggestions to avoid such errors. Areas covered are selection of subjects and therapists, scope and source of dependent measures, treatment specification and experimental design. Errors include unsubstantiated diagnoses; client labels; restricted outcome criteria; and…

Addresses strategies needed in using longitudinal data on psychopathology to test cause-and-effect relationships, including natural experiments, testing of competing hypotheses on mechanisms, study of reversal effects, multiple replications in different circumstances, use of designs to dissociate possible mechanisms, testing for dose-response…

Presents reasons therapist should be included as random design factor in nested analysis of (co)variance (AN[C]OVA) design used in psychotherapy research. Reviews studies which indicate majority of investigators ignore issue of effects from incorrect specification of ANOVA design. Presents reanalysis of data from 10 psychotherapy outcome studies…

Presents a series of arguments that emphasize the importance of comparatively evaluating psychotherapies with appropriate pharmacotherapy and pill placebo. The lack of a pill-placebo arm has rendered moot those studies that compared pharmacotherapy directly with psychotherapy because of the lack of an internal sample defining calibration with…

Reviews a study which found that symptoms associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are neither unique to or common among Vietnam veteran psychiatric patients or their Korean war counterparts. Questions choice of study sample, confounding variables, and source of data. A rebuttal by the original author is included. (WAS)

Methods are proposed and described for estimating the degree to which relations among variables vary at the individual level. As an example, M. Fishbein and I. Ajzen's theory of reasoned action is examined. This article illustrates the use of empirical Bayes methods based on a random-effects regression model to estimate individual influences…

Examined factors associated with research attrition in a long-term follow-up study (48 months). Researchers attempted to contact all randomized participants, not just those who completed treatment. The analyses deal primarily with refusal, the main reason for attrition. Short-term outcome did not predict refusal. The findings, if generalizable,…