New Perspectives in the Adaptive Assessment of Depression: The ATS-PD Version of the QuEDS

Abstract

Measurement is a crucial issue in psychological assessment. In this paper a contribution to this task is provided by means of the implementation of an adaptive algorithm for the assessment of depression. More specifically, the Adaptive Testing System for Psychological Disorders (ATS-PD) version of the Qualitative-Quantitative Evaluation of Depressive Symptomatology questionnaire (QuEDS) is introduced. Such implementation refers to the theoretical background of Formal Psychological Assessment (FPA) with respect to both its deterministic and probabilistic issues. Three models (one for each sub-scale of the QuEDS) are fitted on a sample of 383 individuals. The obtained estimates are then used to calibrate the adaptive procedure whose performance is tested in terms of both efficiency and accuracy by means of a simulation study. Results indicate that the ATS-PD version of the QuEDS allows for both obtaining an accurate description of the patient in terms of symptomatology, and reducing the number of items asked by 40%. Further developments of the adaptive procedure are then discussed.

On the Implementation of Computerized Adaptive Observations for Psychological Assessment

“…In recent studies (Spoto et al, 2012;Spoto et al, 2018;Spoto, Stefanutti, et al, 2013;Stefanutti et al, 2018;Stefanutti & Robusto, 2009), error rates between 0 and .1 were low, values between .11 and .2 were moderate, and values between .21 and the upper boundary of .5 were high. Appendix S3 (available in the online Supplemental Material) contains our detailed methodological rationale for the proposed thresholding.…”

“…In recent years, another increasingly frequent solution in clinical research involves computerized adaptive assessment. This evaluation procedure-usually performed using electronic devices such as a PC or a tablet-consists of adaptively administering items based on people's previous responses (Petersen et al, 2006;Spoto et al, 2018).…”

“…Clinicians also widely apply adaptive assessment in psychological testing via the so-called computerized adaptive testing (Wainer, 2000). Several articles in the past two decades showed that computerized adaptive testing allows clinicians to (a) reduce the length of the questionnaires (Petersen et al, 2006); (b) collect the same amount of information as tests' extended (traditional) versions (Spoto et al, 2018); (c) avoid accuracy loss; and (d) increase the assessment's efficiency (Donadello et al, 2017). While adaptive questionnaires are becoming frequently adopted by researchers (Gibbons et al, 2012;Michel et al, 2018;Serra et al, 2017;Spoto et al, 2018), the same cannot be said for adaptive observational assessments.…”

“…Several articles in the past two decades showed that computerized adaptive testing allows clinicians to (a) reduce the length of the questionnaires (Petersen et al, 2006); (b) collect the same amount of information as tests' extended (traditional) versions (Spoto et al, 2018); (c) avoid accuracy loss; and (d) increase the assessment's efficiency (Donadello et al, 2017). While adaptive questionnaires are becoming frequently adopted by researchers (Gibbons et al, 2012;Michel et al, 2018;Serra et al, 2017;Spoto et al, 2018), the same cannot be said for adaptive observational assessments. Until now, the logic of adaptivity in observations is mainly related to training behavior detection (e.g., the Train-to-Code software; Ray & Ray, 2008), and the detection of behaviors for clinical purposes lacks sufficient research.…”

Extracting partially ordered clusters from ordinal polytomous data

“…This answer format appears to be very well suited for assessing knowledge, but it might be inadequate when KST is applied to different fields such as psychological assessment, attitude evaluations or medical diagnosis. These last applications have recently received an increased attention and they represent one of the core applicative developments of the theory (Bottesi et al, 2015;Donadello et al, 2017;Serra et al, 2015Serra et al, , 2017Spoto et al, 2013Spoto et al, , 2018Spoto et al, , 2010. Nonetheless, the possibility of a generalization of KST to the polytomous case has been explored so far only from a theoretical perspective (Bartl & Belohlavek, 2011;Schrepp, 1997;Stefanutti et al, under review).…”