[R] Seeking friend for life (not)

[Chris Evans]

I'll take a risk following Uwe's wonderful response to that advert.  
I'm looking for someone, perhaps particularly a stats student, who 
might want to do a piece of work with me on using R to present and 
analyse routine data that psychotherapists might submit on a cgi-bin 
interface and perhaps cross-referencing that against some largish 
referential data to which I have access.

Like Uwe, I require that the student bring beauty, brains, money, 
infinite tolerance ... no, seriously.  If this might be of any 
possible link up with yourself or a student of yours, read on, 
otherwise reread Uwe's post or just hit the delete button!

The situation is that I have co-developed a "copyleft" self-report 
measure that adult, tabloid literate clients in psychological 
therapies can complete readily that gives reasonable indication of 
their state say at referral, assessment, start of therapy, during 
therapy, end of therapy, follow-up etc.  It's part of a system we 
call CORE (Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation).  How it is used 
is up to practitioners as our aim is to persuade therapists that such 
data can be of use to them, not just to researchers.  There is a 
linked therapist completed assessment form and end of therapy form 
which provides a therapist rating of initial and final state but, 
much more importantly, provides information that contextualises the 
self-report data.

A company in whom I have no financial interest have written a 
wonderful PC based program that takes data and analyses it (CORE-PC, 
see http://coreims.co.uk/ for information on that and the system of 
measures).  However, I am interested in putting something on the www 
using a cgi-bin interface to R to allow therapists not yet convinced 
of the value of CORE-PC to overcome their alienation from routine 
data analysis. 

I am a psychotherapist and psychotherapy researcher first but my 
stats is competent and I've pretty much fixed on R for all my stats 
work now (bye SPSS et al.!) and love it.  However, to use R to do 
this well clearly means getting my head around RZope/RSOAP or 
Rstatserver or something like that as just using CGIwithR, though 
brilliant, is slow and inefficient.

I have discussed this with our local university (Nottingham) who are 
R supportive but have no cgi-bin expertise so I'm asking more widely 
now.  Our/my history is of getting good papers out and we have good 
ones on uses of the system in submission and in press as well as as a 
sample list below.  Unless I do most of the work I'm very unconcerned 
about where my name comes in co-authorship as I'm not under RAE 
pressures, just my own and NHS pressures to move this initiative on.  
Hence it may be a good link up for people.  I currently have 
legitimate access to anonymised datasets from a few thosand in 
specific (multi-practitioner) services to massive (c40k) datasets 
from wider collections and there are many angles to look at within a 
general EDA/visualising approach to help therapy practitioners 
overcome their phobias and lack of numeracy.

Do get in touch directly if you think this may be of some interest.

Very best,

Chris

Sample publications, happy to send snail mail copies:

Barkham, M., Evans, C., Margison, F., et al (1998) The rationale for 
developing and implementing core outcome batteries for routine use in 
service settings and psychotherapy outcome research. Journal of 
Mental Health, 7, 35-47.
Barkham, M., Margison, F., Leach, C., et al (2001) Service profiling 
and outcomes benchmarking using the CORE-OM: toward practice-based 
evidence in the psychological therapies. Journal of Consulting and 
Clinical Psychology, 69, 184-196.
Evans, C., Connell, J., Barkham, M., et al (2002) Towards a 
standardised brief outcome measure: psychometric properties and 
utility of the CORE-OM. British Journal of Psychiatry, 180, 51-60.
---- (2003) Practice-Based Evidence: benchmarking NHS primary care 
counselling services at national and local levels. Clinical 
Psychology & Psychotherapy, 10, 374-388.
Evans, C., Mellor-Clark, J., Margison, F., et al (2000) CORE: 
Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation. Journal of Mental Health, 9, 
247-255.
Margison, F. R., Barkham, M., Evans, C., et al (2000) Measurement and 
psychotherapy: Evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. 
British Journal of Psychiatry, 177, 123-130.
Mellor-Clark, J., Connell, J., Barkham, M., et al (2001) Counselling 
outcomes in primary health care: a CORE system data profile. European 
journal of psychotherapy, counselling and health, 4, 65-86.
-- 
Chris Evans <chris at psyctc.org>
Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy, Rampton Hospital; 
Research Programmes Director, Nottinghamshire NHS Trust, 
Hon. SL Institute of Psychiatry
*** My views are my own and not representative of those institutions 
***