Wikipedia: Clinician Friend or Foe?

Shelby Johnson, Emily C. Goldman, Mian-Li Ong, Kenny Le, Rachael Kang, Ellie Wu, & Eric A. Youngstrom

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Funded by grants from Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP), Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP) and American Psychological Association (APA)

2017 Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology Conference

BACKGROUND

• Evidence-Based Assessment (EBA)
  • EBA uses most current evidence to guide clinical decision-making and avoid bias¹
• Barriers to EBA
  • Clinician concern about inaccessibility and cost of using high-quality instruments²
  • Identifying which instruments are high-quality
• Wikipedia as a Dissemination Tool
  • Substantial support for effectiveness of dissemination through high-traffic websites³
  • Wikipedia is 7th most viewed site in world⁴
  • Can be continuously updated to reflect most current empirical research
  • Wikipedia content found to be highly accurate⁵
• Goal of Research
  • Use Wikipedia to further widespread dissemination of EBA-related content and tools

METHODS

• Procedure
  • Collected instruments from recent reviews^6,7 and Division 12 repository, then screened instruments
  • Uploaded information on instruments to Wikipedia pages (development/history, psychometric data, items on screeners, scoring information, etc.)
• Participants
  • 36 free and validated scales, ranked using criteria adapted from Hunsley and Mash (2005)⁸
• Measures
  • For new pages (n=31), measured Wikipedia page views from day of creation to January 2016
  • For edited pages (n=5), measured page views from date of first edit to January 2016

RESULTS

• Instrument Page Hits (Jul ’15 – Nov ’16)
  • 404,173 page hits recorded from 36 total pages
  • 162,338 page hits from new pages (n = 31)
• Hits Categorized by Disorder
  • Anxiety and obsessive-compulsive instrument Wikipedia pages (126,952  hits)
  • Substance use pages (44,742 hits)
  • Mood disorder pages (51,602  hits)

DISCUSSION

• Impact
  • Help make information on EBA and its tools more readily available to clinicians and general public
  • Mutual benefit and search engine optimization for both Wikipedia and psychological associations from links to and from their web pages
  • Hits continue to accumulate post-data collection
• Future Directions
  • Additional data collection across other constructs
  • Inviting content experts to evaluate and rate information on Wikipedia
  • Forming inter-university teaching syndicate to continuously update information
  • Creating a rubric to evaluate Wikipedia content

REFERENCES

• ¹Hunsley & Mash, 2007
  • Hunsley, J., & Mash, E. J. (2007). Evidence-based assessment. Annual Review of Psychology, 3, 29-51.
• ²Jensen-Doss & Hawley, 2010
  • Jensen-Doss, A., & Hawley, K. M. (2010). Understanding barriers to evidence-based assessment: Clinician attitudes towards standardized assessment tools. Journal of Clinical Child Adolscent Psychology, 39(6), 885-896.
• ³AHRQ, 2012
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2012). Evidence based practice center systematic review protocol: Communication and dissemination strategies to facilitate the use of health and health care evidence. Retrieved from http://www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov.
• ⁴Alexa, 2016
  • Site Overview: Wikipedia.org (2016). Alexa Web Analytics. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org.
• ⁵Reavley et al., 2012
  • Reavley, N. J., Mackinnon, A. J., Morgan, A. J., Alvarez-Jimenez, M., Hetrick, S. E., Killackey, E., Nelson, B., Purcell, R., Yap, M.B., & Jorm, A. F. (2012). Quality of information sources about mental disorders: a comparison of Wikipedia with centrally controlled web and printed sources. Psychological medicine, 42(08), 1753-1762.
• ⁶Beidas et al., 2015
  • Beidas, R. S., Stewart, R. E., Walsh, L., Lucas, S., Downey, M. M., Jackson, K., Fernandez, T., & Mandell, D. S. (2015). Free, brief, and validated: Standardized instruments for low-resource mental health settings. Cognitive and behavioral practice, 22(1), 5-19.
• ⁷Brahos & Fristad, 2015
  • Brahos, M., & Fristad, M. (2015). Free Screening Measures of Childhood Psychopathology. Personal correspondence.
• ⁸Mash & Hunsley, 2005
  • Mash, E. J., & Hunsley, J. (2005). Evidence-based assessment of child and adolescent disorders: Issues and challenges. Journal of clinical child and Adolescent Psychology, 34(3), 362-379.

Instrument Pages Created or Edited Extensively

• Vanderbilt ADHD Diagnostic Rating Scale
• ADHD Rating Scale
• Modified Overt Aggression Scale
• Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale
• Swanson, Nolan and Pelham Teacher and Parent Rating Scale
• The School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised
• Nisonger Child Behavior Rating Form (NCBRF)
• Mood Disorders Questionnaire
• Hypomania Checklist
• Child Mania Rating Scale
• Young Mania Rating Scale
• Parent General Behavior Inventory
• Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children
• Weinberg Screen Affective Scale (WSAS)
• Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders(SCARED)
• Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scales(CY-BOCS)
• Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale
• Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist
• Eating Attitudes Test (EATS)
• Children’s Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Scale (C-NLD)
• Checklist for Autism in Toddlers
• Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers
• UCLA PTSD Index for DSM-IV
• Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale
• Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised
• Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire
• Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index
• Yale Global Tic Severity Scale
• Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test
• Pediatric Symptom Checklist
• Ohio Youth Problems, Functioning and Satisfaction Scales (Ohio scales)
• Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
• CRAFFT Screening Test
• Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale
• Young Mania Rating Scale
• Beck Anxiety Inventory

For more information, contact Shelby Johnson at sjohnso@live.unc.edu