title: Statistical and Epistemological Issues in the Evaluation of Treatment Efficacy of Pharmaceutical, Psychological, and Combination Treatments for Women's Sexual Desire Difficulties.
abstract: We were grateful to receive responses from Leonore Tiefer, Anita Clayton and Robert Pyke, and Richard Balon and Robert Segraves, to our commentary (Brotto et al., 2016 ) on Pyke and Clayton ( 2015 ). These commentaries raise a number of substantive statistical and epistemological issues relating to the evaluation of treatment efficacy in pharmaceutical, psychological, and combination treatments for sexual desire difficulties and caution researchers to remain mindful of sources of bias as we do the science. In what follows, we discuss each of these issues in turn in hopes of encouraging our field to adopt the highest possible standards when carrying out and interpreting treatment outcome research.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Queen's University , Kingston , ON , Canada.
authors.forename: Meredith L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Chivers
authors.affiliation: b UBC Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics & Gynaecology , B.C. Centre for Sexual Medicine, Vancouver General Hospital , Vancouver , BC , Canada.
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Basson
authors.affiliation: c Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology , University of British Columbia , Vancouver , BC , Canada.
authors.forename: Lori A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Brotto
authors.affiliation: d Department of Psychology , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK.
authors.forename: Cynthia A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Graham
authors.affiliation: e Psychology Department , Willamette University , Salem , Oregon , USA.
authors.forename: Kyle R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Stephenson
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D020249:Hormone Replacement Therapy; D006801:Humans; D007989:Libido; D026741:Physical Therapy Modalities; D020018:Sexual Dysfunctions, Psychological / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*