What is it like to be the object of research? On meaning making in self-report measurement and validity of data in psychotherapy research

Femke Truijens; Melissa Miléna De Smet; Martijn Vandevoorde; Mattias Desmet; Reitske Meganck

doi:10.1016/j.metip.2023.100118

What is it like to be the object of research? On meaning making in self-report measurement and validity of data in psychotherapy research

Femke Truijens, Melissa Miléna De Smet, Martijn Vandevoorde, Mattias Desmet, Reitske Meganck

Clinical Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue (1) that self-report measurement is meaningful. ‘John’, a patient-participant in psychotherapy research, is presented to illustrate meaning-making processes in self-report measurement. We show that neglecting individual scoring processes might lead to invalidation of data. Therefore, (2) we argue that it is vital to actively validate data collected by validated measures. As numerical data themselves do not ‘show’ whether they are valid, the story of data collection must be taken into account. Therefore, we argue that mixing qualitative and quantitative methods is necessary for meaningful measurement, which is paramount to progress in psychological science and practice.

Original language	English
Article number	100118
Journal	Methods in Psychology
Volume	8
Early online date	2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2023.100118
Publication status	Published - Nov 2023

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AU - Desmet, Mattias

AU - Meganck, Reitske

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What is it like to be the object of research? On meaning making in self-report measurement and validity of data in psychotherapy research

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