title: Recovery after treatment and sensitivity to base rate.
abstract: Accurate classification of patients as having recovered after psychotherapy depends largely on the base rate of such recovery. This article presents methods for classifying participants as recovered after therapy. The approach described here considers base rate in the statistical model. These methods can be applied to psychotherapy outcome data for 2 purposes: (a) to determine the robustness of a data set to differing base-rate assumptions and (b) to formulate an appropriate cutoff that is beyond the range of cases that are not robust to plausible base-rate assumptions. Discussion addresses a fundamental premise underlying the study of recovery after psychotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle 98195-6490, USA. jdoctor@homer.u.washington.edu
authors.forename: J N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Doctor
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016017:Odds Ratio; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000592:standards*; D020127:Recovery of Function