Treatment of Social Phobia - Essay Example

 'Treatment of Social Phobia' is a good example of a paper on phobias. 
In your own words, describe the aim or objective of the study.
The aim of the study is to test whether a new cognitive therapy program is superior to established behavioural treatment in the treatment of social phobia. The study also compares cognitive therapy with exposure plus applied relaxation, and waitlist to determine the most effective method of treating social phobia.

What was the null hypothesis?
There will be no difference in improvement between people with social phobia receiving cognitive therapy compared to people receiving exposure therapy.

What was the experimental hypothesis?
There will be a difference in improvement between people with social phobia receiving cognitive therapy compared to people with social phobia receiving exposure therapy.

What was the independent variable?
The independent variable is the administration of therapy.

What were the conditions of the independent variable?
The conditions for the independent variable were to combine exposure therapy treatment with the well-known applied relaxation training program.

What was the dependent variable?
Social Phobia Composite

Give two of the criteria that were used in participant selection/exclusion.
To qualify for selection, the patient must have met the DSM-IV criteria for social phobia. Additionally, the patient must also have been in the age bracket of 18-60 years to qualify for selection.

What type of design was used (was it between or within participants)?
The between-participants design was used as the study compares results from two groups, that is, people with social phobia receiving cognitive therapy and people with social phobia receiving exposure therapy.

What problem might arise using this choice of design?
Participants might not have matched participant in the other condition because the participants are not matched to characteristics in this design.

State two ways in which the researchers tried to prevent or reduce confounding variables
Both CT and EXP+AR sessions lasted 90 minutes. Additionally, approaches were based on treatment relevant model of maintenance of the disorder that was personalized to include a patient’s own symptoms and behaviour.

Does the study have external validity? Explain your answer
The study has external validity as it suggests the superior treatment for social phobia.

Are the results reliable? Explain your answer.
The results are reliable as they are built on tried and tested techniques such as The Beck Anxiety Inventory and The Beck Depression Inventory.

State what descriptive statistics were used in the presentation of data.
Variance, Covariance and t-tests

Suggest one potential improvement to this study.
Develop a model that uses alternative tools to video and reduces the relative length of CT sessions, which is relatively long.

Explain why this would be an improvement.
This improvement would make the CT model easier to disseminate in clinical settings where it would otherwise be difficult to disseminate.