Jacobson N S, Christensen A
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle 98105-4631, USA.
Am Psychol. 1996 Oct;51(10):1031-9. doi: 10.1037//0003-066x.51.10.1031.
Although there has been much discussion of the recent Consumer Reports (CR) study (1995) on the effectiveness of psychotherapy, there is little new information reported either in the CR article or in M. E. P. Seligman's (1995) discussion of the findings. The findings that are new are hard to interpret because of serious methodological problems. In fact, the CR study is similar in many ways to H. J. Eysenck's (1952) controversial report on the effectiveness of psychotherapy, a study that has been rejected by the field despite the fact that it avoided some of the methodological shortcomings of the CR study. It would be a mistake to put forth a design rejected in the 1950s as an exemplar of good effectiveness research, especially when better alternatives exist. Clinical trials, despite many limitations, can answer all of the questions regarding the effectiveness of psychotherapy posed by M. E. P. Seligman, without the interpretive ambiguities and other methodological problems inherent in surveys such as the one published in CR.
尽管近期《消费者报告》（1995年）关于心理治疗效果的研究引发了诸多讨论，但无论是该报告文章还是M.E.P. 塞利格曼（1995年）对研究结果的讨论中，都几乎没有新信息。新发现因严重的方法学问题而难以解释。实际上，《消费者报告》的这项研究在很多方面与H.J. 艾森克（1952年）关于心理治疗效果的有争议报告相似，尽管该研究避免了《消费者报告》研究中的一些方法学缺陷，但仍被该领域所否定。将一个在20世纪50年代就被否定的设计作为有效研究的典范是错误的，尤其是当存在更好的替代方案时。尽管临床试验有诸多局限性，但它能够回答M.E.P. 塞利格曼提出的关于心理治疗效果的所有问题，而且不存在像《消费者报告》中所发表的那种调查所固有的解释模糊性和其他方法学问题。
