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With the current focus on increasing utilization of empirically supported treatments, knowledge of sample differences and similarities has increasing importance. The present study compared anxiety-disordered youth (age 7-13) from (a) five Norwegian service clinics (SC, N = 111) to (b) a university research clinic (RC) in Philadelphia, USA (N = 144) on pre-treatment characteristics measured by the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher Report Form, Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule, and Children's Global Assessment Scale (CGAS). SC youth demonstrated higher levels of anxiety based on child- (d = 0.42-1.04) and parent-report (d = 0.53) and conduct problems based on parent-report (d = 0.43) compared to RC youth. SC youth was more functionally impaired on the CGAS (d = 0.97), whereas RC youth evidenced a greater number of diagnoses (d = 0.63). The two samples were equivalent regarding parent-reported symptoms of affective, somatic, attention-deficit/hyperactivity, and oppositional problems. Future directions and clinical implications are discussed., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Some evidence suggests that research and service clinics differ on treatment-relevant dimensions, but no study has examined whether research clinics (RCs) themselves differ. We compared 2 samples of children and adolescents (ages 7 to 17 years) with anxiety disorders treated in 2 different university-based child anxiety RCs, one in Philadelphia (n = 184) and one in Miami (n = 64), on child symptom and diagnostic measures, family characteristics (e.g., income), and level of maternal depression. The samples were not significantly different on any youth symptom and diagnostic measures except 1 (parent-reported diagnoses); further, the 2 samples were statistically equivalent on 3 of 6 youth symptom measures. Although the Miami sample had significantly more parent-reported diagnoses than the Philadelphia sample, the effect size was small (Cohen's d = .44). Statistically significant differences between the samples in ethnic background and family income were observed, though the former was not significant after controlling for population differences. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of homogeneity of RCs for treatments tested there.

Compared 2 groups of children with anxiety disorders: those treated in a university-based research clinic (RC) and those treated in community-based service clinics (SCs). A widely endorsed goal in intervention research is to disseminate evidence-based treatments from RCs to SCs. Attaining this goal requires an understanding of the similarities and differences between clients in these 2 settings. Youth from SCs showed more comorbid externalizing diagnoses and externalizing problems and were more likely to come from low-income and single-parent families. On measures of internalizing symptomatology and diagnoses, youth from RCs were very similar to SC youth. To facilitate development of treatments with real-world applicability, we describe a model involving the testing of treatments in real-world settings. We also discuss limitations to this project.