dickerson et al - study support for token economies

Question 1

what did dickerson et al conduct?

Answer 1

a review

Question 2

what did dickerson et al do in his review?

Answer 2

dickerson et al reviewed 13 studies in which researchers had used token economies to encourage schizophrenic patients to engage in positive, adaptive behaviours

Question 3

what did dickerson et al find?

Answer 3

he found that 11 out of 13 studies reported on improvement in the schizophrenic patients behaviours after hospitals implemented token economies.
as well as this, token economy’s were particularly effective when they were used in combination with other treatments such as antipsychotic medication, CBT or family therapy.
This indicates that token economies are effective in managing patients behaviours.

Question 4

limitation if the studies used when investigating token economies

Answer 4

• in a lot of studies investigating token economies, token economies were used on all of the schizophrenic patients in the study at the same time. so there was no control group which decreases the validity of the studies as even if researchers saw an improvement in the patient’s behaviours after using token economies, they couldn’t be sure that the improvement was recall caused by token economies.
• it might just be that over time patients behaviours would have improved even without the token economies as they got more used to the hospital and more used to their medication.
• so without a control group we cant be sure that there is really a cause and effect relationship between token economies and improvements in behaviour