The Use of Several Methods of Follow-Up Analysis with One Cohort

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Abstract
A brief survey of cohort follow-up studies used by researchers in the past 50 years was presented. Major methods used in the evaluation of patient movement patterns after admission were extracted from the literature, and 7 techniques were chosen to be applied in a 6 year follow-up study of 100 schizophrenic first admissions to a California state mental hospital. It was maintained that data from the same cohort yielded different conclusions concerning the success in getting and keeping patients out of the hospital and the required number of years a cohort had to be followed beyond which only insignificant changes occurred. The advantages and disadvantages of the several follow-up methods were also described, although the conditions of any study would determine which methods would be used.