Clinical Psychology: Researching Mental Health

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One way to explore the causes of mental health

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Investigate the impact of different treatment methods, and found out how disorders progress in patients, all of which have a huge effect on the outcomes of patients

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Longitudinal methods (2)

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•take place over a long time period and often involves comparing a sample group with their own performance over - developmental or time-based changes can be seen through the patterns of measurements

•Allows psychologists to see if there is any reduction in the symptoms to help them to assess how effective the treatment is

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2 examples of a longitudinal study

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• POTS - patients assessed at week 4, 8 and 12. The impact of the treatment was analysed at the end of the 12 week point

•Vallentine (2010) studied the usefulness of group work and CBT for patients in a high security hospital - longitudinal approach using questionaires and interviews before and after intervention programme

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Cross -sectional methods (2)

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•useful when researchers want to take a quick 'snapshot' of behaviour in a given population in a set period of time. Usually a large group of people studied in this sample

•this enables a good cross section to be studied from the whole target population

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1 example of a cross sectional study

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Wijesundera (2014). Study focused on patients undertaking different types of drug therapy and tobacco use in schizophrenia patients at a hospital in Sri Lanka. A sample of 306 out patients was selected including every third patient who was diagnosed with schizophrenia using ICD-10. Results included prevalence of smoking was less than in many countries, and the risk of tobacco use was less in patients using clozapine

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Cohort effect

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H

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Culture

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The way a group of people share their decisions and behaviour, such as sharing norms in society

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Cross-cultural research (4)

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•carried out by researchers who want to compare some behaviour or attitude in different cultures. So they want to look for similarities and differences between cultures

•universality can be studied if a result is found in many different cultures, maybe it means it is in our nature

•researchers may use data already gathered about one culture and compare it with data from another culture that looks at the same thing

•there may be more reasons why Cross-cultural methods are relevant in clinical psych

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Meta-analysis (5)

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•involves using the findings of different studies, e.g. using secondary data. The research methods used are the same or very similar so that findings can be pooled

•findings are analysed and the researchers will seek studies from a variety of places, cultures and times, which have all tested in the same area, with the aim of bringing the findings together

•this gives a larger sample and more findings, hopefully showing reliability and generalisability

•clinical psych has used it to find out about the effectiveness of therapies and treatments across different patient groups

•focuses on effect sizes: when analysing effectiveness of CBT, size of effect will be analysed

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Example of a study using meta analysis

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Carlsson (2000). By combining the results of various neurotransmitter studies to investigate the role of neurotransmitters including dopamine, serotonin and glutamate in schizophrenia

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Primary data + examples (3)

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•gathered first hand from source, directly by the researcher. For example: milgram (1963) studies on obedience and banduras studies on looking at children copying role models

•clinical: rosenhan (1973) gathered primary data

•lavarenne (2013) used data from one of the group sessions

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Secondary data + example

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Already gathered by researchers and are used by others for further research

Clinical: carlsson (2000)

•Gottesman and Shields (1966) used secondary data for twin studies

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Case studies (3)

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•researchers use a variety of different methods to gather information and then triangulate the data to draw conclusions = reliability

•often the data gathered will be qualitative, allowing an in depth analysis of the group being studied

•conclusions will be highly valid for the sample being studied as the focus is on real life

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Individual differences in relation to the patients insight into their illness and how they respond to psycho-education (3)

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•different insights into their illnesses

•they may respond differently to the programme from eachother

•usefulness of the programme may not apply to everyone

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What must people on the HCPC register provide every 2 years when they re-register about their general health

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Required to provide information on any health issues that they have if they are likely to affect their ability to practice safely

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Nominal

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When data is in the form of discrete categories

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Ordinal

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When numbers/scores can be ranked

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Interval

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The differences in the units/scores are equal distances apart

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Independent measures design

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Different participants used in each condition of the experiment

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+ and - of the independent measures design (5)

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✔no order effects

✔demand characteristics are less of a problem - fewer cues as participants are in only one condition

✔same test can be used in both conditions

✖participant variables may affect results

✖more participants needed than in repeated measures

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Repeated measures design

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Same participants used in each condition of the experiment

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+ and - of repeated measures design (5)

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✔controls for participant variables

✔fewer participants needed than for independent measures

✖demand characteristics may be more obvious

✖order effects - fatigue

✖different but equivalent tests may need to be designed for each condition

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Matched pairs design

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Different participants used in each condition, but they are the same on certain important variables which may affect their performance on the experimental task - comparison type questions

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+ and - of matched pairs design (6)

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✔controls for participant variables

✔no order effects

✔fewer demand characteristics than for repeated measures

✔some tests can be used in both conditions

✖difficult to match participants accurately

✖more participants required

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Thematic analysis (3)

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•non numerical data often gathered through methods such as interviews

•it is a way of analysis data without losing its meaningfulness completely, but enables a vast amount of qualitative data to become more manageable, by reducing it into general patterns, trends and themes

•it can be inductively or deductively

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Thematic analysis - inductive approach (2)

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•researcher would read and re-read the qualitative data gathered and themes would emerge from the data without the researcher imposing any of their own ideas or expectations from it

•it means observing something and then developing a model of how things might be from the data gathered

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Thematic analysis - deductive approach (3)

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•the researcher specifies the themes that they will look for before analysing the data

•going from a theory to predict what might happen, according to the theory, and then testing the idea against reality to see if it's the case

•use the knowledge and information you have in order to understand something

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6 thematic stages

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1. Familiarising oneself with the data

2. Generating codes

3. Looking for themes in the codes

4. Reviewing the themes

5. Defining and naming the themes

6. Producing the report

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+ and - of thematic analysis (4)

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✔a flexible way of analysing qualitative data. It can be done using categories and themes from theory, or it can be used to generate categories and themes from data directly

✔a way of maintaining a richness in data and yet summarising a large amount of qualitative data in a manageable way

✖considered unscientific because the themes are highly dependent on the subjective opinion of the researcher and therefore can lead to researcher bias

✖can be hard to find themes that are not driven by the questions asked by the researcher in the interview

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Grounded theory (3)

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•a way of analysing qualitative data and means not using existing theory but finding theory from the data

•the goal of analysis is to generate a useful theory from the data

•the aim of grounded theory is to retain the richness of the data and to produce coding that enables those meanings captured to be presented fairly in a manageable form

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4 stages of grounded theory

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1. Coding is done - taking small pieces of text and putting text into a heading that suits it - identifying the idea

2. Codes are collected into concepts, which groups the data together

3. The concepts are then grouped into similarities and differences and the theory can now start to develop

4. The theory comes from collecting the categories together - it's about forming a model that can explain the data

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+ and - of grounded theory (4)

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✔it uses specific terms to explain how it is done and is explicit in its guidance, therefore it is able to develop a theory to explain the data

✔evidence is integrated into the theory, so the theory itself should have a good degree of validity

✖validity may be compromised if the data that was gathered to develop the theory was problematic in some way

✖the researchers may be biased in the way they gather or interpret data, meaning the theory would be biased or subjective opinion rather than grounded in evidence