Despite psychological scientists’ increasing interest in replicability, open science, research transparency, and the improvement of methods and practices, the clinical psychology community has been slow to engage. This has been shifting more recently, and with this review, we hope to facilitate this emerging dialogue. We begin by examining some potential areas of weakness in clinical psychology in terms of methods, practices, and evidentiary base. We then discuss a select overview of solutions, tools, and current concerns of the reform movement from a clinical psychological science perspective. We examine areas of clinical science expertise (e.g., implementation science) that should be leveraged to inform open science and reform efforts. Finally, we reiterate the call to clinical psychologists to increase their efforts toward reform that can further improve the credibility of clinical psychological science.
Research across age groups has consistently indicated that psychopathology has a general factor structure such that a broad latent dimension (or p factor) captures variance common to all mental disorders as well as specific internalizing and externalizing factors. This research has found that the p factor overlaps substantially with trait negative emotionality (or neuroticism). However, less is known about the psychological substance of the specific factors of the general psychopathology model or how lower-order facets of neuroticism may relate to each psychopathology factor. We investigated the structure of neuroticism and psychopathology as well as associations between these domains using multimethod assessments in a sample of 695 preadolescent children. We found that both psychopathology and neuroticism may be well characterized by bifactor models and that there was substantial overlap between psychopathology (p) and neuroticism (n) general factors as well as between specific factors (Internalizing with Fear, Externalizing with Irritability).
Enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) are widely used to measure salivary testosterone. However, little is known about how accurately different EIAs assess testosterone, partially because estimates across various EIAs differ considerably. We compared testosterone concentrations across EIAs of three commonly used manufacturers (DRG International, Salimetrics, and IBL International) to liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Relative to EIAs from Salimetrics and IBL International, EIAs supplied by DRG International provided the closest approximation to LC-MS/MS testosterone concentrations with the least measurement error. Additionally, EIAs largely overestimated testosterone in women's saliva samples with higher testosterone concentrations, relative to men's.Examining our results and comparing them to existing data revealed that testosterone EIAs had decreased linear correspondence with LC-MS/MS in comparison to cortisol EIAs. Overall, this paper provides researchers with information to better measure testosterone in their research and more accurately compare testosterone measurements across different methods.
The transition to adolescence is marked by enormous change in social, biological, and personality development. Although accumulating evidence has offered insight into the nature of higher-order personality trait development during this period, much less is known about the development of lower-order personality traits, or "facets." The current study used a cohort-sequential longitudinal design to examine domain-and facet-level trajectories for mother-reported personality traits during the early adolescent transition. Personality trait domains and facets were assessed with the Inventory of Child Individual Differences-Short Form (Deal, Halverson, Martin, Victor, & Baker, 2007). Participants were 440 children followed at 4 annual timepoints from middle childhood (M age ϭ 9.97, SD ϭ 0.81) to early adolescence (M age ϭ 13.11, SD ϭ 0.84). Results of latent growth curve models showed substantial facet-level personality stability in this period, as well as small to moderate linear change in 13 of 15 facets. Gender differences in change were evident for 9 facets. Overall patterns suggested consistent increases in agreeableness facets with null to small gender differences. Neuroticism and openness to experience facet change was heterogeneous within each domain, but patterns were similar for boys and girls. Extraversion primarily decreased, though the magnitude and direction of change differed between facets and genders. Conscientiousness increased across all facets, but only among girls. These findings overall demonstrate a high degree of developmental consistency in facets within each domain as well as some notable differences. Further, this study contributes to a small and somewhat mixed evidence base for current theories of adolescent personality development.
The last decade has seen enormous advances in research transparency in psychology. One of these advances has been the creation of a common interface for openness across the sciences -the Open Science Framework (OSF). While social, personality, and cognitive psychologists have been at the fore in participating in open practices on the OSF, clinical psychology has trailed behind. In this paper, we discuss the advantages and special considerations for clinical assessment researchers' participation in open science broadly, and specifically in using the OSF for these purposes. We use several studies from our lab to illustrate the uses of the OSF for psychological studies, as well as the process of implementing this tool in assessment research. Among these studies are an archival assessment study, a project using an extensive unpublished assessment battery, and one in which we developed a short-form assessment instrument.
Neuroticism is the personality trait most consistently and strongly connected to psychopathology. The majority of research on the relationship between traits and mental illness has focused on neuroticism's connection with broad psychopathology spectra or discrete disorders. However, both personality and psychopathology are hierarchically-organized domains that may be examined at multiple levels of fidelity and bandwidth from very specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (i.e., nuance traits or symptoms) to very broad patterns indexing many interrelated tendencies (i.e., general factors). The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a recently proposed nosologic framework for psychopathology symptoms and domains that accounts for this tiered organization. Here, we illustrate how neuroticismpsychopathology relationships-both what is known and unknown-may be elucidated through the HiTOP system.
Research across age groups has consistently indicated that psychopathology has a general factor structure, such that there is a broad latent dimension (or p factor) capturing variance common to all mental disorders, as well as specific internalizing and externalizing factors. This research has found that the p factor overlaps substantially with trait negative emotionality (or neuroticism). However, less is known about the psychological substance of the specific factors of the general psychopathology model, or how lower-order facets of neuroticism may relate to each psychopathology factor. We investigated the structure of neuroticism and psychopathology, as well as associations between these domains in a sample of 695 pre-adolescent children using multi-method assessments. We found that both psychopathology and neuroticism may be well-characterized by bifactor models, and that there was substantial overlap between psychopathology (p) and neuroticism (n) general factors, as well as between specific factors (Internalizing with Fear, Externalizing with Irritability).
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