Data Roulette: A Collection of Nearly Random Base Rates

Reviews the book, Practitioner's Guide to Symptom Base Rates in the General Population by Robert J. McCaffrey, Lyndsey Bauer, Sid E. O'Bryant, and Anjali A. Palav (see record 2006-00913-000). This book is a small spiral-bound compilation of tables listing base rates for a variety of medical and psychiatric symptoms within different populations. After a three-page preface, the authors present a relentless stream of tables unbroken by commentary. Each table is offered with the study's author, publication date, sample size, gender, age, nationality, population, time frame, and method of report. There is also an index listing primary symptoms and page references to help the reader navigate; however, it is incomplete, and retrieving a table by a symptom ranked second or third in the listing requires rereading the text. For example, one study listed a self-report of thought disorder symptoms with an approximately 30 percent base rate in a U.K. community sample. The reviewer could not retrieve it using the index, and scanning by topic or population was pointless. Given that base rates tend to define abnormality and given the usefulness of inquiring about comorbid symptoms, this book seems like it ought to be useful. Instead, it is a curiosity. Results are presented without the rationale for the studies' inclusion or discussion of the results, no matter how provocative. The reviewer hoped to appreciate this book but found that it is likely to remain on the shelf except as a novelty. It provides strange and impractical information that is ambiguous and difficult to evaluate. It provides random observations through a very small window, allowing no sense of the larger setting. As it is, it relies on data roulette, spinning randomness and fact together. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)