Reference no: EM133405028

For the last several years Dr. Smartinuf has been developing and promoting her Dyadic Group Therapy (DGT) for the treatment of persons with Social Anxiety. The treatment involves twice-weekly therapy sessions for each patient for 16 weeks. There is one therapist and 8 patients in each group. The first session each week is the Dyadic Therapy Session that involves a meeting of just the therapist and an individual patient (the therapist meets each of the eight patients in the group at different times). During the 30-minute Dyadic Therapy Session the patient answers a scripted set of questions presented by the therapist (the topics shift each week according to a specific order that is detailed in the DGT Handbook). The second session each week is the Group Therapy Session that involves a meeting of the therapist and all eight patients in that group. During the 90 minute Group Therapy Session the patients take turns answering the same questions that they answered in the Dyadic Therapy Session. The idea is that during the Group Therapy Sessions patients will be familiar with the questions and the therapist, and can concentrate on getting used to talking in front of and with other people.

Last month, Dr. Smartinuf learned that Dr. Gomer is using DGT to treat patients diagnosed with mild-to-moderate Schizophrenia. Dr. Gomer's idea is that the Dyadic Therapy Session provides "social skills practice" that will then be applied during the Group Therapy Session. Dr. Gomer has conducted some research with his patients and claims that DGT therapy is beneficial with Schizophrenia.

Your job as researcher is to investigate whether DGT works better for patients with one of these diagnoses versus the other. Specifically, your hypothesis is: Being treated for Social Anxiety using DGT will produce higher scores on the General Psychiatric Wellness Index (GPWI) than will being treated for Schizophrenia using DGT.

Design a research investigation of the research hypothesis. Assume that Dr. Smartinuf and Dr. Gomer have arranged the cooperation of two clinics and you have access to their patients. Your clinical research team will deliver the DGT treatment using the standardized procedure to the patients you indicate. We will have the GPWI administered and scored by an independent testing service on the date(s) that you specify.

1. Is this a causal or an associative(correlational) research hypothesis?

2. What is the IV (proposed causal variable) and DV (proposed outcome variable)

3. Can a true experiment be designed and conducted to test this research hypothesis?