Evaluation: Clinical results and research methodology

Abstract

The favorable results of two major research reports-Progress on Family Problems by Beck and Jones and a series of studies ofDepressed Patients by Weissmanet al.—are reviewed for the purpose of comparing the methodologies of these studies with that of other well-known research reporting casework treatment to be noneffective. A number of the latter studies are critically examined for their use of social norms rather than client-oriented indicators of improvement, inadequate measuring devices, failure to select appropriate areas of measurement, inappropriate generalization from narrow study populations, overconcentration on delinquents, predelinquents, and multiproblem families, inadequate attention to motivation, inappropriate hypotheses, and serious errors in statistical procedures and in the selection of control groups.