Quiz 3: Chapter 6

• Clinical psychologists do research to gain knowledge about psychological disorder.
• Treatment outcome is when clinical psychologists conduct research on how well their therapies work
• Essential questions to ask when measuring therapy outcome:

  • How should psychotherapy outcome be measured?
  • What should be measured when assessing psychotherapy outcome?
  • When should psychotherapy outcome be measured?
  • Who should rate psychotherapy outcome?
• Efficacy refers to the success of a particular therapy in a controlled study conducted with clients who were chosen according to particular study criteria
• To test efficacy, participants are selected on basis of meeting strict diagnostic criteria, in that they lack comorbid diseases
• Effectiveness refers to the success of a therapy in actual clinical settings in which client problems span a wider range, and clients are not necessarily chosen as a result of meeting rigid diagnostic criteria
• Effectiveness is how well it works in the real world
• When it comes to effectiveness, the lack of scientific rigor leaves us unsure that the therapy is undoubtedly the factor that produced the outcome
• When measuring the outcome of therapy in either an efficacy or effectiveness study, researchers must be careful to distinguish statistical significance from clinical (real-world) significance when interpreting results
• Statistical tests can indicate whether a significant difference exists between two groups (e.g. individuals who received or did not receive treatment)
• Statistically significant difference doesn't mean that two groups differ much in real world terms
• Internal validity refers to the extent to which the change in the dependent variable is due solely to the change in the independent variable
• • External validity: refers to the generalizability of the result - the extent to which the same finding is valid for different settings and populations
• In an efficacy study, researchers aim to minimize any element of the study that may bring into question the causal connection between the treatment and outcome
• Efficacy studies are respected for their high internal validity but criticized for their low external validity, while effectiveness studies are the complete opposite
• Dissemination strategies are efforts to promote therapies that have demonstrated effectiveness in treatment studies to large numbers of therapists
• Forms of dissemination strategies:

  • In-person workshops and courses
  • Synchronous online training sessions
  • Self-paced or asynchronous online training programs
  • Ongoing consultation
  • Direct-to-consumer strategies in which clients rather than therapists hear the benefits with the hope the clients will request that therapy
• In order to increase the dissemination of evidence-based therapies, thereby increasing the number of clients who receive them, strategies should shift away from what has not worked especially well.
• Researchers must be careful about the clients selected for the study when trying to find efficacy of a particular therapy
• Researchers must select clients who meet the DSM diagnostic criteria and whose diagnostic profiles are free of other complicating factors or comorbidities
• Unfortunately, many studies lack participants of ethnic minorities, and the conclusions regarding efficacy are not necessarily applicable to those that differ from the studies' participants
• Cultural adaptations of evidence-based therapies - many have positive results

  • Cultural adaptations of evidence-based therapy have grown so much now that there are meta-analyses
  • Success of cultural adaptations can enable improvement in related problems including the fact that ethnic minorities simply receive less psychotherapy than those in the majority
• There are continuing studies about assessment methods - which may involve the development, validation, or expanded use of new instruments; the establishment of normative data for specific populations on assessment tool; a comparison of multiple assessment tools to one another, etc.
• Some studies examine the issues of diagnosis and categorization regarding psychological problems such as examining the validity or reliability of existing or proposed diagnostic constructs, relationship between disorders, prevalence or course of disorders, or other topics related.
• Clinical psychologists also examine elements of their own profession through empirical research.
• They also study clinical psychologists' activities, beliefs, and practices among other aspects of their professional lives.
• Training philosophies, specific coursework, opportunities for specialized training, and the outcome of particular training efforts all represent areas of study.
• Training graduate students to write effective reports can be challenging
• To what extent to graduate students in clinical psychology experience impostor syndrome - believing they aren't as capable as others
• • Pre- and postdoctoral internships - what personality assessment techniques are most commonly included in the training experience
  • MMPI, PAI, MCMI
• Psychologists should maximize their positive impact regarding the pandemic
• Coming to the pandemic, psychologists have these items on their agendas:

  • How will the pandemic affect mental health?
  • How will mental health effects of the pandemic be experienced by diverse groups?
  • How effective is psychotherapy in treating pandemic-related psychological distress and disorders?
• Experimental method: involves a number of discrete, sequential steps
• An experiment begins with observation of events, then develops a hypothesis off of that.
• In hypothesis development is the definition of independent and dependent variables.
• Independent variable(s) are manipulated by the experimenter
• Dependent variable(s) are expected to change as a result of the independent variables, a measurable value.
• After hypothesis, empirical testing of hypothesis takes place (the actual experiment).
• Fourth step of the experiment is to match the results and interpretations obtained during empirical testing
• Randomized clinical trials (RCTs): researchers test the outcome of a particular, manualized therapy on a particular diagnosis