Building the SPR Psychotherapy Databank: Structured Discussion

GUAJARDO, VIVIANA; ROUSSOS, ANDRES

Virginia Beach

Congreso; 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research,; 2012

Society for Psychotherapy Research

During 2010 SPR members voted for the creation of a clinical database in order to share clinical material for research. A committee was created and is currently working on ways to implement the project. The accumulation and sharing of research data and findings constitutes the lifeblood of any scientific field. Researchers must build on the work of others. In the absence of interactive scientific discourse, researchers will, on the one hand, unknowingly duplicate the experiments and computations of others, and, on the other hand--perhaps even more damaging--will lose the opportunity to build upon, confirm, question, and expand the results and findings of the field. A shared database is fundamental for the development of psychotherapy research because many of our current scientific goals and questions can be addressed using the clinical data that has already been collected, or whose collection is now actively under way. The main problem with the existing recorded clinical and quasi-clinical material is that it was collected, and is currently being collected, by independent research teams and practitioners, with few opportunities to share materials and techniques. This open discussion provides an opportunity for all members to hear the issues being addressed and to express their views and ideas. Three broad categories of issues will be addressed: (1) organizational and administrative responsibilities; (2) methodological and technological suitability; and (3) legal and ethical constraints and protections. Discussants: Viviana Beatriz Guajardo, Universidad de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Michael J. Constantino, James Franklin Boswell, Arjan Berkeljon