Dr. Throckmorton and Exodus Media are touting a new study that shows reorientation therapists rating well amongst their clients. Exodus brags for several paragraphs about how it was published in the Journal of Psychology & Christianity, which they note “is a peer-reviewed journal published by the Christian Association of Psychological Studies” and is “…edited by American Psychological Association Fellow, Peter Hill, PhD.”
The study is available for download in Word (.doc) format here. The study is composed of 28 individuals who rated 80 therapists. All the clients rated themselves as more homosexual than heterosexual before therapy, and 82% rated themselves as more heterosexual than homosexual after therapy. 89% said religion was “extremely important” to them.
Frankly, this kind of study doesn’t even need peer review. Anybody can look at those numbers and figure out the bias. I would hope anyone would be shocked by drawing conclusions from a sample of 28 people. Throckmorton admits that the study should be reconducted with more representative sample techniques, and I would hope he aims to include more former clients who don’t have so much incentive to be nice to their conversion therapists. Maybe even find some former clients who aren’t white protestant males.
The fact is that with such a small and biased sample, this study is meaningless. That hasn’t kept Exodus clear of proclaiming how scientifically valid the study is, however, and I expect this will join the Spitzer study in the ex-gay library of self-refuted reference material.
I am working on an analysis of Throckmorton’s study. It should be up later today or tomorrow.
Wait… 28 individuals who rated 80 therapists?
So these people had an average of 2.85 therapists each to help them become “more heterosexual”?
Are there reparative therapy clients who are not ‘white protestant males’? From what I can tell this is the only group targeted by the reparative therapy industry. A few women seem to be along for the ride, but not many. And it might be more accurate to add the qualifiers ‘conservative Evangelical Christian’ to the description.
I work in health care quality, at a company that rates health plans. One of the key things we examine when we accredit a health plan is how well they “credential” or vet their physicians before letting them on the health plan’s network. Credentialing includes checking license, sanctions, malpractice coverage, etc.
A couple of years ago I read a news article showing the value of this process. The article was about an HMO in the mid-west who discovered, during their credentialing process, that one of their doctors had not only never been to medical school, he had not graduated high school! The HMO was credentialing the physician for their more limited network after he had participated for some time in their open-access PPO product (where there was no in-depth credentialing) and clearly he was not only refused entry in the network, but the state shut him down.
The really scary thing is that this “physician” was highly rated by his patients. They were very satisfied with his bed-side manner, and he had no malpractice claims against him.
Patient satisfaction does not always equate to quality.
CPT_Doom at October 3, 2005 04:40 PM
Also, patient satisfaction does not usually equate to effectiveness of the “therapy.” Patient “satisfaction” probably relates to whether or not the patient can be induced to like the “therapist.”
There is a rather substantial difference.
Or maybe they just need to find the right white protestant males…like me, Peterson Toscano, Jeff Harwood, Wade Richards, etc.
And for the record, the guy I entered the LiA program with and graduated with is African-American–and still considers himself ex-gay…
It’s pretty obvious that they are simply trying to cook up some stats to counter the claim that reparative therapy is detrimental. This isn’t science, it’s PR.