Clinical significance methods: a comparison of statistical techniques

Clinically significant change refers to meaningful change in individual patient functioning during psychotherapy. Following the operational definition of clinically significant change offered by Jacobson, Follette, and Revenstorf (1984), several alternatives have been proposed because they were thought to be either more accurate or more sensitive to detecting meaningful change. In this study, we compared five methods using a sample of 386 outpatients who underwent treatment in routine clinical practice. Differences were found between methods, suggesting that the statistical method used to calculate clinical significance has an effect on estimates of meaningful change. The Jacobson method (Jacobson & Truax, 1991) provided a moderate estimate of treatment effects and was recommended for use in outcome studies and research on clinically significant change, but future research is needed to validate this statistical method.     

The development of therapeutic alliance during psychological assessment: patient and therapist perspectives across treatment

We examined the impact of patient- and therapist-rated alliance developed during psychological assessment on the subsequent alliance measured early and late in formal psychotherapy. We hypothesized that a working alliance developed during psychological assessment conducted from a collaborative therapeutic model of assessment (TMA; Finn & Tonsager, 1992, 1997; Fischer, 1994) between the patient and therapist would carry into formal psychotherapy. We also hypothesized that alliance for those patients receiving a TMA would be significantly greater than patients receiving psychological testing as usual. To test this hypothesis, we administered the Combined Alliance Short Form-Patient Version (Hatcher & Barends, 1996) and the Combined Alliance Short Form-Therapist Version (Hatcher, 1999) to a sample of outpatients and their therapists at the end of the assessment feedback session, early, and late in psychotherapy. The hypotheses were supported as alliance scales rated at the assessment feedback session demonstrated positive and significant relationships with alliance throughout formal psychotherapy and in relation to a control group. The clinical utility and research implications of these findings are discussed.     

The phonological similarity effect in serial recognition

An experiment is reported examining the effect of consistent phonemic similarity among list items on memory retention in a task that is independent of overt speech production, the serial recognition task. Lists of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words and nonwords were constructed such that although phoneme overlap was manipulated (i.e., shared vowel and final consonant [_VC], initial consonant and vowel [CV_], or the two consonants [C_C]), similarity remained constant. The results show that the influence of sub-syllabic mechanisms on STM performance is independent of speech production processes, and similarity in the pattern of results suggests that the same mechanisms subserve the recall of words and nonwords in STM. It is argued that the results are more consistent with psycholinguistic models than nonlinguistic models of STM, and implications for current STM models are discussed.     

Establishing a causal chain: why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes

The authors propose that experiments that utilize mediational analyses as suggested by R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny (1986) are overused and sometimes improperly held up as necessary for a good social psychological paper. The authors argue that when it is easy to manipulate and measure a proposed psychological process that a series of experiments that demonstrates the proposed causal chain is superior. They further argue that when it is easy to manipulate a proposed psychological process but difficult to measure it that designs that examine underlying process by utilizing moderation can be effective. It is only when measurement of a proposed psychological process is easy and manipulation of it is difficult that designs that rely on mediational analyses should be preferred, and even in these situations careful consideration should be given to the limiting factors of such designs.     

The use of ethnic minority populations in published psychological research, 1990-1999

For this study, the authors analyzed the contents of 16 psychology journals for the presence of empirical articles on African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans during the period ranging from 1990 to 1999. In 6 APA journals, there was a low percentage (4.7%) of such articles. African Americans were the most studied ethnic group. Data collected for this study also indicated that minority research has been increasing more in non-APA journals than in APA journals. In both APA and non-APA journals, counseling-oriented journals had higher percentages of minority articles than did journals of other subdisciplines. Possible explanations, consequences, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Effects of contextual predictability and transitional probability on eye movements during reading

In 2 eye-movement experiments, the authors tested whether transitional probability (the statistical likelihood that a word precedes or follows another word) affects reading times and whether this occurs independently from contextual predictability effects. Experiment 1 showed early effects of predictability, replicating S. A. McDonald and R. C. Shillcock's (2003a) finding that words with a high transitional probability (defeat following accept) are read faster than words with a low transitional probability (losses following accept). However, further analyses suggested that the transitional probability effect was likely due to differences in predictability rather than transitional probability. Experiment 2, using a better controlled set of items, again showed an effect of predictability, but no effect of transitional probability. The authors conclude that effects of transitional probability are part of regular predictability effects. Their data also show that predictability effects are detectable very early in the eye-movement record and between contexts that are weakly constraining.     

On the use of beta coefficients in meta-analysis

This research reports an investigation of the use of standardized regression (beta) coefficients in meta-analyses that use correlation coefficients as the effect-size metric. The investigation consisted of analyzing more than 1,700 corresponding beta coefficients and correlation coefficients harvested from published studies. Results indicate that, under certain conditions, using knowledge of corresponding beta coefficients to input missing correlations (effect sizes) generally produces relatively accurate and precise population effect-size estimates. Potential benefits from applying this knowledge include smaller sampling errors because of increased numbers of effect sizes and smaller non-sampling errors because of the inclusion of a broader array of research designs.     

The attenuating effect of role overload on relationships linking self-efficacy and goal level to work performance

The reported research examines the moderating effects of role overload on the antecedents and consequences of self-efficacy and personal goal level in a longitudinal study conducted in an industrial selling context. The results indicate that role overload moderates the antecedent effect of perceived organizational resources on self-efficacy beliefs. They also show that role overload moderates the direct effects of both self-efficacy and goal level on performance, such that these relationships are positive when role overload is low but not significant when role overload is high. Further, the results reveal a pattern of moderated mediation, in which goal level mediates the indirect effect of self-efficacy on performance when role overload is low but not when it is high. Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.