Evaluating drug effectiveness in an office setting for children with attention deficit disorders.

Stimulant medications have been demonstrated to be useful in treating groups of children with attention deficit disorders, but placebo effects and situational differences in behavior in individual cases need to be followed and assessed. A simple procedure for systematically assessing these factors in the individual child in the office setting is described and illustrated. The procedure provides an objective means of determining the drug and placebo effects on the reported problem behavior and the differences between parent and teacher perceptions of the behavior.