Syzygy, science, and psychotherapy: The Consumer Reports study

Results from a Consumer Reports (CR) survey indicated that psychotherapy ha s proven to be quite effective and that longer-term therapy has been more e ffective than shorter-term therapy. Critiques of the methodology of this st udy have included the claim that (a) the self-selected sample was biased in favor of people who felt that they had benefited from psychotherapy. (b) t he use of retrospective accounts led to a further positive bias, and (c) th e validity of the outcome assessment was questionable. Supplemental data fr om other sources, including prospective data from a large sample of psychot herapy patients, are presented to augment the interpretation of the results of the CR study and to illustrate how some critiques of research results c an be evaluated systematically. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons. Inc.