MODELING PSYCHOTHERAPY OUTCOME AS EVENT IN TIME - AN APPLICATION OF MULTISTATE ANALYSIS

Standard survival analysis (SA) and multistate analysis (MSA) are meth ods for modeling categorical psychotherapy outcome events over time. T he underlying principles, mathematical details, and indications for us ing each technique are discussed, and data from an anorexia nervosa ps ychotherapy outcome study comparing psychodynamic psychotherapy with p sychodynamic psychotherapy plus cognitive-behavioral techniques are us ed to illustrate the use of SA and MSA techniques. MSA includes multip le competing outcome states in a single model. A single MSA model incl udes reaching target weight and treatment dropout before reaching targ et weight as competing events. It is concluded that MSA is an informat ive analytic technique in the domain of psychotherapy research.