Planning for a schizophrenia research program: a prototype

The present article describes the conduct of clinical psychiatric research in this highly sophisticated age of multidisciplinary investigations and long-term follow-ups. Planning proceeds in stages from initial discussions to statistical analysis. Observations and descriptions constitute the primary stuff from which conclusions may be obtained. However, the entire program needs sufficient flexibility to enable the original plan to be altered by additions, alterations, or deletions without harming the primary purposes. The contents are hardly new, but they need constant repetition. In fact we seem to have made little dent in a field redundant with reductionism and unanswerable questions. Objective ad subjective methods are increasingly becoming fused instead of being in conflict. Bit by bit, the planning continues throughout any research program which is varyingly exciting, boring, and again exciting, and some answers become apparent if not complete.