Meta analysis of childhood anxiety treatment : an evaluation of overall effectiveness

This poster presents the findings from a current meta-analysis of childhood anxiety treatment outcome studies, reflecting advancements in methodology and reporting. Included in this study are 25 primary outcome studies (N = 1, 725) and six follow-up studies. Previous researchers (e.g., In-Albon & Schneider, 2007; Ishikawa, Okajima, Matsuoka, & Sakano, 2007; Soler & Weatherall, 2007) have recently conducted meta-analyses examining the efficacy of treatments for childhood anxiety disorders. The current meta-analysis was done to reflect some advances in methodology that were not apparent across all of these studies (e.g., inclusion/exclusion criteria, the calculation of unconventional effect sizes, insufficient descriptive statistics). Furthermore, this study used both conventional and updated strategies for conducting meta-analyses, reflecting and extending research in the child depression area (Weisz, McCarty, & Valeri, 2006). One purposse was to facilitate more accurate comparisons across different meta-analyses examining the treatment of anxiety disorders for both children and adults (e.g., Ghahramanlou, 2003) and the treatment of other childhood, and adult, disorders such as depression (e.g., Weisz et al., 2006). In addition to presenting both traditional and updated between group effect sizes, a number of other effect sizes were also calculated: within-group effect sizes, follow-up effect sizes, and proportional effect sizes (for diagnosis outcome). Additionally, based on heterogeneity within the sample of studies, a number of moderator analyses are to be conductedto examine potential sources of variance