Let us not confound the schizophrenic's family

Abstract

Whenever possible, the investigator who wishes to study the schizophrenic's family environment should collect data which previous research suggests is significant in characterizing the schizophrenic patient. If one only has access to patients with certain characteristics, then obviously one's study is limited by that reality. However, when subjects can and do differ according to such things as age, birth order, or education, rather than drop subjects from the study and lose valuable information, and rather than omit recording certain data on subjects, and thereby confound the results, the use of multivariate analysis of covariance may be a helpful alternative to solving some of the dilemmas in family research. It can always be argued that once research is completed someone else will come across an important variable that was not accounted for previously. Nevertheless, certain factors have already been considered to be significantly related to the schizophrenic's family milieu, and readers, as well as investigators, should not fail to recognize them in their ongoing work whenever possible.