Patient characteristics and expectancy measures as factors that influence the expectancy-improvement relationship

A recent study found factored measures of patient's expectancies for therapeutic gain significantly correlated with 1 of 15 objective measures of treatment outcome for the hospitalized patients. A subsequent study of the same relationship that used unfactored expectancy measured with a diagnostically homogenous sample of patients found the patients' expectancies significantly correlated with 10 of the same 15 measures of improvement. This study reexamined the initial expectancy-improvement data using unfactored measures of expectancy. The overall results showed that characteristics of samples of Ss and the adequacy of expectancy measures both significantly influence the results of tests of the expectancy-improvement relationship.