ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

n.b. ongoing series related to a study of George Barton, founder of the Occupational Therapy Profession.  George Barton was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1901 (Reed and Sanderson, 1999) and he traveled to Colorado some time after that.  I could not confirm the exact dates of his travel but an educated guess would be sometime around 1907, because his architecture practice with Sturgis was listed as  being active up until that approximate time (AIA, 1914). It is difficult to know exactly what brought George Barton to Colorado - it could have been his own "chase" for a tuberculosis cure or it could have been that he had political connections with the Colorado governor, John Shafroth who was a member on the Committee on the Philippines in the 65th Congress and prior to that was a Colorado representative and frequently involved in US-Filipino relations. Reed and Sanderson document that the Governor commissioned Barton to investigate factors related to famine along t

Occupational therapists have been attempting to improve research on sensory integration by adopting more strict fidelity standards and by using Goal Attainment Scaling as an outcome measure.  Three years ago I blogged about an SI effectiveness study and expressed some concerns on the research design - you can read about that at http://abctherapeutics.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-study-on-si-effectiveness-but.html. A new study has been published by Schaaf et al (2013) and can be accessed online in full text at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10803-013-1983-8/fulltext.html  However, one major difference is that in the new study the researchers used an intervention and a 'usual care' group. Use of control groups in this manner can help to correct for potential Hawthorne effects - but only if the study is designed properly.  In the previous study there was an OT/SI group and a fine motor training group.  The fine motor group in the first study was probably not exactly a