Contents of It's not All in Your Head by Asmundson and Taylor

(random assignment was intended to reduce between-group differences but the
equivalence of the groups could not be confirmed statistically). Also, because of the small
sample size, the results may have been influenced by outliers. There was no follow-up
data collected so there was no evidence about the long-term effects of the treatment. The
sample was from a small Western Canadian city and, therefore, the results may only be
generalizable to similar populations.
Many participants dropped out or were unavailable after completing the initial
screening (n = 22) and the assessment interview (n = 5). The drop-out rate for the
treatment group was 40% and this is higher than the 0% - 38% drop-out rates of other
health anxiety trials (see van Boeijen et al., 2005 for review). Participants reported having
a poor therapeutic alliance with the facilitators and Head Researcher and this may have
contributed to the drop-out rate. In other health anxiety studies, eligible individuals chose
not to participate or dropped out if they had less serious complaints (i.e., functioned well
and thus had less motivation for treatment) and had full-time or part-time jobs (i.e.,
lacked free time; Visser & Bouman, 2001). The participants in this study appeared to be
highly functioning (married, employed, most T1 scores elevated but not outside the
healthy normative range). There are many reasons for the lack of interest in this study
such as: preference for traditional psychotherapy instead of self-help, preference for a
clinical setting and registered psychologists, intimidation by the long consent form, lack
of readiness to change and motivation, lack of severe symptoms, inability to travel and
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