Using Wikipedia To Disseminate Evidence-Based Assessment: An Initial Study of Impact and Reach (2016)
Undergraduates: Kenny Le, Mian Li Ong Emily C. Goldman, Rachael Kang Min Jung, Ellie G. Wu
Faculty Advisor: Eric Youngstrom
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience
Evidence-based assessment (EBA) has advanced greatly to provide current, unbiased evidence in psychological assessment. However, current barriers include selecting accessible, high quality, validated instruments that have low cost. The current study evaluated the impact of putting free and validated psychological assessment screeners on Wikipedia.
In the current study, we collected free and validated online screeners. We used reliable criteria for evaluating standardized instruments to obtain a pool of 36 screeners. For measures that did not exist on Wikipedia, we created pages and uploaded the following information: development and history, psychometric data, and items on the screeners. For existing pages, we added the same data to the Wikipedia pages. Lastly, we added external links to assessment and treatment pages from reliable sources to guide more traffic to these pages. We measured outcomes by measuring page views from date of creation or last edit from July 2015 to January 2016. 52,494 out of 106,155 total website hits were from the created pages, notably from anxiety and OCD-related pages.
The project integrates existing APA divisional initiatives and connects them to the largest free global encyclopedia. Both parties would immensely benefit from disseminating high quality assessment information recognized in the field. This study¿¿¿s methodology could extend to include content experts and teaching syndicates across universities to keep the pages current.