How does it feel to score psychic suffering questionnaires?
“Gold standard” research frequently uses self-report measures, in which people are asked to translate their experiences into numbers. Scientists calculate with those figures at the group level to examine effects of therapy and support for hypotheses. Because “the numbers” are collected with so-called “valid” measurement instruments, researchers assume that those data can be used without problems in their research contexts. But how obvious are these data, and can they indeed be interpreted in therapeutic research without difficulty and without further explanation?
In this paper, Femke Truijens en colleagues ask the questions that are often skipped or taken for granted in research: what
do
people actually when they translate their experiences into numbers? How does it feel to do that as a function of therapy research? And are those data indeed interpretable as researchers think?
This paper zooms in on a patient-participant, “John,” who participated in a large-scale “mixed method” study of the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Psychodynamic Therapy.
John was angry. John felt “used” because the data was being used not for him but for science. He felt objectified, and that hurt again with every questionnaire he scored. And so he sabotaged the data collection.
In this paper, Truijens and colleagues discuss how individual experiences while scoring questionnaires about psychological suffering affect “the data” and “evidence. To enhance the value of that evidence, they argue the need for combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. A truly valid basis for psychotherapeutic research requires hearing not only “the numbers” but also the stories of participants.
