A cooperative software development paradigm for content analysis-based psychology research procedures (abstract)

Results from a pilot study of the Worst Event Test (WET), a computer-aided content analysis-based procedure developed jointly by members of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas Department of Psychiatry and members of The University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science Engineering, suggest that a semi-automated content analysis is feasible for studying the relationship of cognitive distortion to depression, and is preferable to manual procedures. The cooperative, evolutionary software development approach which emerged from the WET may be seen as a paradigm useful in assisting in the development of other initially ill-defined psychology research procedures, and has the potential to benefit psychology researchers who might find manual development tasks prohibitive in terms of time and cost.

The development of the WET, a multi-step procedure containing an initially ill-defined information system as well as human reasoning processes to be determined and standardized, was divided into three phases: (1) achievement of component reliability, (2) system prototype testing, and (3) integration. Each phase corresponded to a known psychology research need, and determined both knowledge engineering and information system design activities required. Software design and development were carried on concurrently with cyclic psychology procedure development, facilitating vital interaction between psychology activities, knowledge engineering activities, and information system design. Rapidly prototyped software provided timely development assistance for the psychology researchers at each step, as well as software usable during system prototype testing.

Following procedure validation, the kernel software will be integrated with other data-handling processes specified during high-level information system design to create a custom workstation environment for psychology researchers engaged in similar research.