Examined generalizability of treatment studies by comparing solicited and nonsolicited patient groups treated or studied in clinical settings. Findings suggest it may be possible to generate comparable samples in terms of pretreatment symptomatology, however, data are too limited to permit conclusions regarding generalizability of treatment…

Brunswik's concept of representative design is reviewed with special reference to studies of clinical bias. Limitations of single-stimulus, actor-script, and serial replications are discussed. No satisfactory alternatives exist to adequate sampling of stimulus persons. Various attributes that are found in population must be properly represented in…

To determine the extent to which published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of psychotherapy can be generalized to a sample of outpatients, the authors matched information obtained from charts of patients who had been screened out of RCTs to inclusion and exclusion criteria from published RCT studies. Most of the patients in the sample who had…

Investigators are urged to plan factor analytic studies prior to collecting the data, to formulate a hypothesized factor structure, to develop several relatively pure measures of each factor expected, and to select an appropriate sample of at least 200 cases. Continuous variables should be used rather than dichotomous variables. (Author)

A broad range of strategies in sampling, measurement, design, execution, implementation, and analysis are examined. Specific strategies are suggested that tend to be successful in the real world of psychiatric clinical research. (Author)