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Forensic Psychiatry Research Society |
FPRS Workshop: "How to get into Research"
9th February 2007
9th February 2007
| Dr Roland Jones Clinical Lecturer in Forensic Psychiatry Department of Psychological Medicine Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff University Heath Park Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK | |
| Title: | Developmental Risk Factors for Early Start Offending in People with Schizophrenia: A Case Control Study of Special Hospitals Admissions |
| Roland M Jones1, Claudio Verzilli2, Mike Ferriter3, and Pamela J Taylor1 | |
| Abstract | Background: There is a higher prevalence of offending behaviour among people with schizophrenia. Some of the offending is attributable to symptoms of the illness, but other factors are also important. It has been suggested that there are two groups of patients - those that start offending during childhood or adolescence before the onset of the illness (early starters) and those that start offending after the symptoms of the illness develop (late starters), and that the aetiology of offending may be different in each group. The aim of this study was to test whether there is a difference in exposure to developmental factors associated with offending in early versus late starter patients with schizophrenia. Method This is a retrospective case-control study of all patients with schizophrenia admitted to the Special Hospitals in England. Multivariate analysis of 950 patient records was carried out on 17 variables that were significantly associated with early starters in univariate analysis. |
| Results: | Five factors were statistically significant. These were age of first drug use, male gender, having a sibling or father serving custodial sentence, maternal separation and number of parenting changes. Conclusions This study adds weight to the hypothesis that early and late starters differ in their aetiology of offending. Resources to support vulnerable children and families, and help to minimise early exposure to illicit drugs may reduce early start offending in people who develop schizophrenia. |
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| Dr Valentina Moskvina RCUK Research Fellow Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Unit Department of Psychological Medicine College of Medicine, Cardiff University, UK | |
| Title: | Power and pitfalls of statistical data analysis |
| Abstract | With modern technology development and increased public attention to Forensic Psychiatry, it became feasible for researchers to collect relatively large and representative datasets for studying the motivation, and making prediction of human behaviour. Many research groups are combining their data and efforts to provide comprehensive, powerful and therefore reliable results. However, there are many challenges in the statistical data analysis due to the different types of collected data (binary, continuous, categorical) and their distribution, the combination of data from different sources, and collinearity of the predictive variables. Statistical methods to enhance the evidence for susceptibility factors of small effect, and also for discovering functional pathways, are playing an important role in research approaches to complex patterns of human behaviour. The broad range of statistical tools and methods available leads to the question of what is the best way of analysing so diverse data, when different techniques give different, sometimes opposite results. Often practitioners are tempted or forced to use a data-driven analysis approach rather than using the data to prove or disprove a priory hypotheses, as normally assumed in statistics. This is analogous to the multiple testing problem where the results appear to be significant by chance since many tests were performed. Therefore the challenges are to distinguish between false positives and true results, and to recognise the possibility of false-negative findings. Hence, provision for both statistical test power and appropriate correction for multiple testing must be made at the stage of study design. |
| Biographical details: | I graduated from the School of Mathematics and Mechanics of St.Petersburg University (Russia) in 1991 and obtained a PhD in Statistics in the School of Mathematics, Cardiff University (UK) in 2001. I was working as a research assistant/fellow in the School of Mathematics, Cardiff University during 1998-2002, and since 2002 I am appointed as a lecturer, RCUK research fellow in the department of Psychological Medicine, Bioinformatics and Biostatistics unit. My research is now focused in genetic studies of Psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, Dyslexia, unipolar and bipolar disorders). I am involved in studies design and data analyses in our department as well as in the development of new methods for fast, effective and robust data analysis on the whole-genome scan scale. I have great expertise in phenotypic data analyses dealing with binary/categorical data from psychiatric questionnaires combined with continuous biological data. |
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