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A Method for Analysing Assessments of Symptom Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Alistair E. Philip
Alistair E. Philip*
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council’, Unit for Research on the Epidemiology of Psychiatric Illness, Edinburgh University Department of Psychiatry, Edinburgh, 10
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Extract

In studies which attempt to assess the efficacy of some new treatment it is customary to make a formal assessment of the relevant behaviour or symptomatology using standardized inventories, checklists, symptom rating scales or ad hoc ratings of variables considered to be important by the clinician-researcher. Ratings made at the beginning and end of treatment are compared for groups of patients using improvement scores, arbitrary cut-off points and other devices aimed at circumventing the statistical problems arising from the non-normal distributions of most rating scales. Present practice favours the use of some nonparametric statistic in these comparisons. The aim of this paper is to present a method which facilitates the analysis of ratings made on more than two occasions, allowing a trend analysis to be carried out without making assumptions about the distribution of scores. The method also allows the clinician-researcher to make a statistically-based decision regarding the efficacy of the treatment in question for individual patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 115 , Issue 529 , December 1969 , pp. 1379 - 1382
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1969 

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References

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