Assessment of psychiatric outcome—I. Cross section analysis

Abstract

Cross Section Analysis is a flexible method of depicting the outcome of a patient's illness from chronological series data such as post-treatment measurements. Patient status is assessed by display of outcome in terms of ‘cross point values’ at fixed ‘cross points’ in time from a pre-determined origin. The method involved interpolates or extrapolates cross point values when observations are not available at cross point times, by utilizing information from the measurements actually obtained. The necessary procedures and computations are described with illustrations from case data. The cross section method has important practical and theoretical advantages.