Goldstein (1988) - Interviews

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

1) To se if there are gender differences with regard to the re-hospitalisation of people with schizophrenia and to the length of their hospital stays.
2) To consider social factors, mainly factors present before diagnosis, to see if they had an impact on the course of the disorder with regard to gender.
3) To look at DSMII and DSMIII diagnosis to see if there were differences and to test the DSM for reliability and validity

Question 2

Sample

Answer 2

• 199 patients on DSMII, 169 successfully re-evaluated 10 years later on DSMIII
• Then only 90 were selected for monitoring out of those people
• Aged 18-45
• White, well educated

Question 3

Procedure

Answer 3

• Psychiatrists blind to hypothesis, and simply used DSM models to diagnose them
• Also did diagnosis where psychiatrists weren’t blind and found a 0.8 agreement rate, so it was deemed reliable.

Question 4

Gathering data

Answer 4

• Recognise symptoms like anxiety from master level interviewers
• Premorbid functioning - questionnaire used to find out about occupation, relations etc before illness
• Course of illness - statistics from when they were hospitalised and the amount of times they were (and their length of stay)

Question 5

Results and conclusion

Answer 5

• Number of rehosiptalisations for men was 2-3x higher, and length of staay was around 2x higher
• Concluding that men experience more re-hospitalisations and longer lengths of stay
• DSM III was reliable for small sample size here