Evidence-based Clinical Practice – Article overview (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)

This bundle contains an overview of all the articles used in the course "Evidence-based Clinical Practice." given at the University of Amsterdam. It contains the following articles:

“Dennis et al. (2009). Why IQ is not a covariate in cognitive studies of neurodevelopmental disorders.” – Article summary
“Kazdin (2008). New opportunities to bridge clinical research and practice, enhance the knowledge base, and improve patient care.” - Article summary
“Kraemer et al. (2003). Measures of clinical significance.” - Article summary
“Funder et al. (2014). Improving the dependability of research in personality and social psychology: Recommendations for research and educational practice.” - Article summary
“Halpern, Karlawish, & Berlin (2002). The continuing unethical conduct of underpowered clinical trials.” - Article summary
“Moore (2016). Pre-register if you want to.” - Article summary
“Chambless & Hollon (1998). Defining empirically supported therapies.” - Article summary
“Gelman & Geurts (2017). The statistical crisis in science: how is it relevant to clinical neuropsychology?” - Article summary
“Kazdin & Weisz (1998). Identifying and developing empirically supported child and adolescent treatments.” - Article summary
“Kahn (2011). Multilevel modelling: Overview and applications to research in counselling psychology.” - Article summary
“Robinaugh, Hoekstra, Toner, & Borsboom (2020). The network approach to psychopathology: A review of the literature 2008-2018 and an agenda for future research.” - Article summary
“De Vent et al. (2016). Advanced neuropsychological diagnostics infrastructure (ANDI): A normative database created from control datasets.” - Article summary
“Maric et al. (2015). Evaluating statistical and clinical significance of intervention effects in single-case experimental designs: An SPSS method to analyze univariate data.” - Article summary

Bundle items:

Dennis et al. (2009). Why IQ is not a covariate in cognitive studies of neurodevelopmental disorders.” – Article summary

Neurodevelopmental disorders are different from adult acquired disorders involving traumatic brain injury because they involve no period of normal development. Any IQ score in a neurodevelopmental disorder is confounded with the condition. The IQ score can never be separated from the effects of the condition.

Early on in intelligence testing, IQ was seen as a latent

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Kazdin (2008). New opportunities to bridge clinical research and practice, enhance the knowledge base, and improve patient care.” - Article summary

It is unclear which treatment is the most effective in particular cases and it is not clear which treatments have sufficient evidence to be used, as there are no guidelines for this. Evidence-based treatment (i.e. EBT) refers to interventions or techniques that have therapeutic changes in controlled trials. Evidence-based practice (EBP) refers to clinical practice informed by evidence

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Kraemer et al. (2003). Measures of clinical significance.” - Article summary

There are three important questions when assessing the relationship between variables:

Statistical significance
Effect size
Practical significance

The practical significance (i.e. clinical significance) can be assessed by considering factors such as clinical benefit (1), cost (2) and side effects (3). In order to assess the practical significance, the strength of the association

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Funder et al. (2014). Improving the dependability of research in personality and social psychology: Recommendations for research and educational practice.” - Article summary

There appears to be a high rate of false positives in science. The p-value refers to the conditional probability that the present data or more extreme will be observed in a random sample given that the null hypothesis is true. Critique of using the p-value includes not interpreting the p-value properly (1) and the fact that the p-value

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Halpern, Karlawish, & Berlin (2002). The continuing unethical conduct of underpowered clinical trials.” - Article summary

Randomized controlled trials without sufficient statistical power may not adequately test the underlying hypotheses. This makes it useless and, thus, unethical. However, underpowered research continues to be conducted.

Arguments in favour of using underpowered research are that meta-analyses may save the small studies by providing a means of combining the results with those of similar studies (1)

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Moore (2016). Pre-register if you want to.” - Article summary

Selective reporting refers to not publishing and reporting all research results and this is a problem for psychological research. Many scientists do not preregister their studies because they fear it would constrain their creativity (1), it brings added scrutiny to their research reporting (2) and it is another requirement in a field which already has a lot of

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Chambless & Hollon (1998). Defining empirically supported therapies.” - Article summary

Empirically supported treatments refer to clearly specified psychological treatments shown to be efficacious in controlled research with a delineated population. Treatment efficacy must be demonstrated in controlled research in which it is reasonable to conclude that benefits observed are due to the effects of the treatment and not to chance or confounds. This is best demonstrated in randomized

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Gelman & Geurts (2017). The statistical crisis in science: how is it relevant to clinical neuropsychology?” - Article summary

The statistical crisis (i.e. replication crisis) refers to the fact that statistical significance does not necessarily provide a strong signal in favour of scientific claims.

One major challenge for researchers is accepting that one’s claims can be spurious. Mistakes in statistical analyses and interpretation should be accepted and learned from rather than resisted. Criticism and replication

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Kazdin & Weisz (1998). Identifying and developing empirically supported child and adolescent treatments.” - Article summary

There are several characteristics of therapy with children and adolescents:

Dysfunction is difficult to assess
The problematic behaviour may represent short-lived problems or perturbations in development rather than signs of lasting clinical impairment.
Identifying cases is problematic
Youth rarely refer themselves to treatment which makes that externalizing problems are overrepresented in treatment.

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Kahn (2011). Multilevel modelling: Overview and applications to research in counselling psychology.” - Article summary

Multilevel modelling (MLM) is becoming the standard for analysing nested data.

The unit of analysis problem refers to when the moderator variable exists at a different level than the independent and dependent variable (e.g. moderator variable is on the level of the course itself and the independent and dependent variables are on the individual level). Multilevel

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Robinaugh, Hoekstra, Toner, & Borsboom (2020). The network approach to psychopathology: A review of the literature 2008-2018 and an agenda for future research.” - Article summary

The network model to psychopathology states that mental disorders can be conceptualized and studied as causal systems of mutually reinforcing symptoms. This holds that symptoms are not passive indicators of a latent, common cause, of the disorder but agents in a causal system.

The causality hypothesis states that when causal relations among symptoms are strong, the

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De Vent et al. (2016). Advanced neuropsychological diagnostics infrastructure (ANDI): A normative database created from control datasets.” - Article summary

In the advanced neuropsychological diagnostics infrastructure (ANDI), datasets of several research groups are combined into a single database. It contains scores of neuropsychological tests from healthy participants. This allows for accurate neuropsychological assessment as the quantity and the range of the data surpasses most traditional normative data. It facilitates normative comparison methods (e.g. those in which entire profiles

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Maric et al. (2015). Evaluating statistical and clinical significance of intervention effects in single-case experimental designs: An SPSS method to analyze univariate data.” - Article summary

Single-case experimental designs (SCED) are useful methods in clinical research to investigate individual client progress. It could also be used to determine whether an intervention works. In single-case experimental designs, a single participant is repeatedly assessed on one or multiple symptoms during various phases (e.g. baseline). The statistical analysis of this data is difficult.

Advantages of

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