Open Science and the Future of Client Care

In January 2022, the APA Monitor discussed 14 emerging trends, one of which was titled “Open Science is Surging.” Helen Santoro begins by noting that, “The global crisis of COVID-19 has caused scientific insights and discoveries to evolve at an incredibly rapid pace. As a result, the push for open and transparent science has become more vital than ever.” This is a relatively recent movement, one that raises a number of questions while offering interesting possibilities.

One question is how to compare open source instruments to proprietary ones. The proprietary instruments typically come with claims of reliability and validity data that reassure users of their value. While many researchers make items available, there are not always large samples with robust statistical analysis. At the same time, there may be value in diverse users collecting data from open source instruments.

A second question is whether teams that include practitioners and researchers can use open source instruments to essentially pilot test new instruments to determine their practical utility.

A third question relates to forensic settings in which new instruments may be challenged simply because they don’t have the research history that, for better or worse, the traditionally used instruments have.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that there are a large number of issues raised by the pandemic, the Flynn effect, the LGBTQIA population, the diversity within racial and ethnic minorities, and the need to collect data from fathers, friends, teachers, and others who interact with clients. There are very good reasons to question cohort effects in the data collection from older proprietary instruments. These and other challenges create the opportunity for adventurous professionals to improve assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of clients.