EVIDENCE THAT THERAPY WORKS IN CLINICALLY REPRESENTATIVE CONDITIONS

This article reports a secondary analysis of past therapy outcome meta -analysis. Fifteen meta-analysts provided effect sizes from 56 studies in previous reviews that met 1 of 3 increasingly stringent levels of criteria for clinical representativeness. The effect sizes were synthe sized and compared with results from the original meta-analyses. Effec t sizes from more clinically representative studies are the same size at all 3 criteria levels as in past meta-analyses. Almost no studies e xist that meet the most stringent level of criteria. Results are inter preted cautiously because of controversy about what criteria best capt ure the notion of clinical representativeness, because so few experime nts have tested therapy in clinical conditions, and because other mode ls for exploring the generalizability of therapy outcome research to c linical conditions might yield different results.