The Validity of Psychotherapy Research Findings

Abstract

Summary: Psychotherapy research and psychotherapy science serve mainly to ensure the safeguarding and advancement of the quality of psychotherapy. However, a clear distinction needs to be made between the quality of psychotherapies and the quality of psychotherapy science. In the work at hand the focus is directed towards the quality criteria of psychotherapy research. The central rationale for this focus is that the research work findings obtained are only useful for protecting the quality of psychotherapy when these findings are obtained through qualitatively high standard of research work. In psychotherapy professional circles the quality of scientific findings has up until now mainly been measured in terms of the research methodology. Thereby the experimental study design (RCTs) is the methodology of choice, as it has demonstrable methodological quality standards – Systematic individual case studies are considered to be “unscientific”. Quality and thereby assessment criteria for psychotherapy research must however must be the subject matter and not the method. The development and the securing the assessment criteria for psychotherapy research is based on the criteria meeting what is considered scientific (1) through modification of the assessment criteria of qualitative research it can, in the discussion around and the understanding of psychotherapy research as qualitative research be widened. (2) and through the extension of the characteristic criteria for psychotherapy research specified (3). By means of eight assessment criteria developed by the author both systematic case analyses as well as experimental study designs (RCTs) can be assessed in terms of their quality as well as a methodologically independent quality control from psychotherapy research.

Keywords: Assessment criteria, application criteria, scientifically based criteria, psychotherapy research, qualitative research, quantitative psychotherapy research