Hello. I am interested in conducting a pre and post analysis of some people
who are involved in an intervention. Some of the people may be involved in
the therapy for a couple of months, others for three, four or five months. I
am particularly interested in looking at the outcome scores (measured on an
ordinal scale so parametric analysis seems to be indicated). I would like some
advice about the best way to go about it, is it okay to look at everyone's
start and finish scores on the outcome measure?
From a research question point of view, I am really interested in finding out
about the average change over time, in a global sense to get a 'quick and
dirty' sense of change. The intervention is necessarily tailored to client need
so some people will always be involved for a shorter time than others.
Moreover, I will not know this information ahead of time. I would like to get an
overall picture and the time in the intervention isn't a significant concern at
this stage. In the future, when I have more data, I will at that point be
interested in short term, medium term and long term effects but not for now.
Is it okay to look at pre and post scores in this macro sense using non
parametric analyses?
Thank you in advance for reading. This list serve is a wonderful means to
learn so much (especially from Jeremy). Much appreciated by us post grads.
Sincerely, Louise.
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