Quiz 3 (better terminology)

• Clinical psychologists do research to gain knowledge about psychological disorders
• 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 spam 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 significant from clinical (real-world) significance when interpreting results
• Statistical tests can indicate whether a significant difference exists between two groups
• 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
• Efficacy studies have high internal validity, but have low external validity
• Effectiveness studies have high external validity, but low internal validity
• Dissemination strategies are efforts to promote therapies that have demonstrated effectiveness in treatment studies to large numbers of therapists
• 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 differing from the study's participants
• 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
• Clinical psychologists also examine elements of their own profession through empirical research
• Impostor syndrome is commonly experienced by graduate students - the belief that they believe they are not as capable as others
• The experimental method involves a number of sequential steps: observation of events, hypothesis, experiment, analyzing the results
• The independent and dependent variables are mentioned in the hypothesis
• The independent variables are manipulated by the experimenter
• The dependent variables are expected to change as a result of the independent variables, a measurable value.
• Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are when researchers test the outcome of a particular, manualized therapy on a particular diagnosis
• RCTs begin with recruitment and selection of participants who meet criteria for the diagnosis
• In RCTs, participants are randomly assigned to the experimental group that receives the therapy, or a control group that does not.
• In RCTs, the control group may either get no treatment, be waitlisted, get a placebo or nonspecific treatment or receive a routine type of therapy
• In RCTs, target variables are assessed at the outlet as baseline and at the end (e.g. measures of symptoms - frequency of panic attacks)
• RCTs maximize internal validity by ensuring that improvements in patients are due to the therapy rather than external factors
• RCTs also oversimplify clinical problems by reducing them to objective and easily measured symptoms - producing results that may not translate to the real world
• Quasi-experiments estimate causal relationships and have participants that are grouped on non-random criteria.
• Quasi-experiments do NOT have random assignment, and occur when there may be impractical or have ethical issues
• Quasi experiments do not have good internal validity
• Between-group designs are when participants in different conditions receive entirely different treatments
• Between-group studies have two conditions or groups, one would be an experimental group, the other would be the control
• Within-group designs involve comparisons of participants in a single condition at various points in time
• In other words, within-group studies would see if the levels depend on the point in time they were assessed
• Mixed-group designs combine traits, having both an experimental group and control group, all while measuring changes in all participants on a weekly basis