How Health Professionals Conceptualize and Represent Placebo Treatment in Clinical Trials and How Their Patients Understand It: Impact on Validity of Informed Consent.

Context: Previous studies suggested that many patients, who have given their informed consent to participate in randomized controlled trials (RCT), have somewhat limited understanding of what a placebo treatment is. We hypothesized that the relationship between patients and their health professionals plays a central role in this understanding.

Methods: We interviewed 12 patients included in RCTs (nine suffering from Parkinson's disease and three from Huntington's disease) and 18 health professionals involved with RCTs (eight principal investigators, four associated physicians and six clinical research associates).

Factors associated with missing data in an experience sampling investigation of substance use determinants.

Background: The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) collects data repeatedly over time, and is therefore prone to missing observations. Little is known about the characteristics of the subjects and of the ESM procedure associated with unanswered records. Through an ESM investigation of substance use determinants, these characteristics were able to be analyzed.

Computerized ambulatory monitoring in psychiatry: a multi-site collaborative study of acceptability, compliance, and reactivity.

Computerized ambulatory monitoring overcomes a number of methodological and conceptual challenges to studying mental disorders, however concerns persist regarding the feasibility of this approach with severe psychiatric samples and the potential of intensive monitoring to influence data quality. This multi-site investigation evaluates these issues in four independent samples. Patients with schizophrenia (n = 56), substance dependence (n = 85), anxiety disorders (n = 45), and a non-clinical sample (n = 280) were contacted to participate in investigations using computerized ambulatory monitoring.

[Validation of the French translation of Beck's Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale].

Objectives: To validate the French version of the Sociotropy- Autonomy Scale (SAS) developed by Beck and others. The SAS is a self-questionnaire of 60 items divided into 2 dimensions measuring sociotropy and autonomy.

Method: The SAS was completed by 1028 students, 140 of whom jointly completed Robins' Personal Style Inventory-Revised, and 75 of whom completed the SAS again 3 months later.

The relation between social behavior and negative affect in psychosis-prone individuals: an experience sampling investigation.

Daily social behavior and negative affect were examined in a sample of individuals with a wide spectrum of psychosis-proneness scores. Using the experience sampling method, participants were signaled five times per day for a 1-week period to provide naturalistic reports of location, activity, and social behavior. Little evidence was found for a direct association between psychosis-proneness and specific behavioral profiles, but individuals with higher scores of psychosis-proneness reported spending more time doing nothing or waiting.