Literature update: A critical review

Abstract

There are two recent meta-analytical reviews looking at the efficacy and the effectiveness of marital and family therapy (Shadish W. R., Ragsdale, K, Glaser, R. R. & Montgomery, L. M. (1995) The efficacy and effectiveness of marital and family therapy: a perspective from meta-analysis, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21, pp. 345–360; DUNN, K. L. & SCHWEBEL, A. I. (1995) Meta-analytic review of marital therapy outcome research, Journal of Family Psychology, 9, pp. 58–68). Shadish et al. have attempted to make their earlier analysis of this area more reader friendly and the paper is certainly an easier read than the original. These two papers constitute the main reviews of marital therapy over the last five years, although, regrettably, most of the papers published this decade are not included in the reviews. For example, the Shadish et al. review includes 163 randomized studies, but only through to 1988. The findings clearly show that the marital therapy group (when they excluded the family therapy group) had a significant positive effect size, although this was not universal. The authors report that marital therapy produced a significant improvement in 41% of the treatment conditions studied. The review excluded those studies where the problem was a sexual dysfunction and where only traditional sex therapy was given.