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Journal of Pediatric Psychology Advance Access published online on November 13, 2009
Journal of Pediatric Psychology, doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsp102
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Editorial: Assessing and Enhancing Clinical Significance/Social Validity of Intervention Research in Pediatric Psychology*

Michael A Rapoff, PhD

Department of Pediatrics, University of Kansas Medical Center

All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael A. Rapoff, Department of Pediatrics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS 66103, USA. E-mail: mrapoff@kumc.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The purpose of this editorial is to renew the call for assessing and documenting clinical significance/social validity in our intervention research. Clinical significance/social validity needs to be documented at three levels: (1) the goals of our intervention studies are relevant to interested parties, such as children, parents, referral sources, and third party payers; (2) the intervention procedures are acceptable to interested parties and are therefore more likely to be adopted if effective; and (3) the effects of our interventions are satisfactory to consumers and meet some standard of achieving clinically significant effects. This editorial describes methods for assessing clinical significance/social validity at all three levels.

A statistically significant treatment effect gives us confidence that an effect is not due to chance. However, a statistically significant effect does not inform us about the size, importance, or clinical significance of the effect. Even "effect sizes" (using Cohen’s convention of r = .10 . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Definitions of Clinical Significance and Social Validity
 

   Assessing and Documenting Clinical Significance/Social Validity
 
Treatment Goals
Treatment Procedures
Treatment Outcomes
Subjective Judgments or Observations
Reliable Improvements
Normative Comparisons
Standards Determined by Expert Consensus
Use Single Subject Designs
Assess Changes in Clinically Relevant Collateral Measures

   Conclusions
 

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