AB: Research Flashcards
What does a comprehensive case study involve?
developmen- tal milestones, family history, medical history, educational background, employment history,marital history, social adjustment, personality, environment, and experiences in therapy over the life span.
Can a case study indicate causality?
Nah dawg
What three ways can a case study be used?
- to provide a rich description of a new or unusual clinical phenomenon or treatment,
- to disprove an allegedly universal hypothesis, and
- to generate hypotheses that can be tested through controlled research.
What is meant by clinical significance?
. Clinical significance is defined by whether a relationship between variables is large enough to matter; For a treatment effect to be considered clinically significant, a researcher might want to see that at the end of active treatment, symptoms were decreased by 50 percent or that patients appeared comparable to those without disorder.
Whats the difference between a longitudinal design and a cross sectional design?
In a longitudinal design, the researcher tests whether causes are present before a disorder has developed. This is in contrast to a cross-sectional design, in which the researcher measures the causes and effects at the same point in time.
What is the high risk method?
researchers study only people with above-average risk of developing a disorder rather than a random sample.
What is epidemiology?
the study of the distribu- tion of disorders in a population.
What three features of a disorder does epidemiology focus on?
- Prevalence. The proportion of people with the disorder either currently or during their lifetime
- Incidence. The proportion of people who develop new cases of the disorder in some period, usually a year
- Correlates. Variables that are correlated with the presence of the disorder.
What percentage of people in the US describe meeting the criteria for a psychological disorder in their lifetime?
46-60%
What is meant by the family method?
The family method, comparison of members of a family, can be used to study a genetic predisposition among members of a family because the average number of genes shared by two blood relatives is known.
What is the difference between first and second degree relatives?
People who share 50 percent of their genes with a given person are called first-degree relatives of that person. Relatives who are not as closely related share fewer genes. For example, nephews and nieces share 25 percent of the genetic makeup of an uncle and are called second-degree rel- atives.
What is meant by the concordance of a disorder?
If a predisposition for a psychological disorder can be inherited, a study of the family should reveal a relationship between the proportion of shared genes and the concordance of the disorder in relatives. When relatives are matched on presence or absence of a disorder, they are said to be concordant.
What are index cases or pro bands?
The starting point in such investigations is the collection of a sample of persons with the diagnosis in question. These people are referred to as index cases or probands.
What is the difference between MZ and DZ twins? What method is this?
In the twin method, both monozygotic (MZ) twins and dizygotic (DZ) twins are com- pared. MZ, or identical, twins develop from a single fertilized egg and are genetically the same. DZ, or fraternal, pairs develop from separate eggs and are on average 50 percent alike geneti- cally, no more alike than are any two siblings.
What problems do twin studies solve?
To the extent that a predisposition for a psychological disorder can be inherited, concordance for the disorder should be greater in genetically identical MZ pairs than in DZ pairs. When the MZ concordance rate is higher than the DZ rate, the characteristic being studied is said to be heritable.
