Assumptions and consequences of treating providers in therapy studies as fixed versus random effects: reply to Crits-Christoph, Tu, and Gallop (2003) and Serlin, Wampold, and Levin (2003)

Abstract

In their comments on the authors' article, R. C. Serlin, B. E. Wampold, and J. R. Levin and P. Crits-Christoph, X. Tu, and R. Gallop took issue with the authors' suggestion to evaluate therapy studies with nested providers with a fixed model approach. In this rejoinder, the authors' comment on Serlin et al's critique by showing that their arguments do not apply, are based on misconceptions about the purpose and nature of statistical inference, or are based on flawed reasoning. The authors also comment on Crits-Christoph et al's critique by showing that the proposed approach is very similar to, but less inclusive than, their own suggestion.