Evaluating Experimental Studies in Couple Therapy: Some Implications for Assessment and Best Practices

This article is written to help therapists who are not clinical researchers assess the quality of experimental studies that are designed to compare the relative merits of different approaches to treating distressed couples. To illustrate some of the major difficulties encountered in conducting comparative research with couples (instrumentation, pretreatment assessment, internal validity, external validity, reliability of treatments, outcome evaluation, etc.) hypothetical examples are presented. Suggestions for addressing some of the salient methodological issues identified in the article and implications for determining best practices are offered for consideration.