PCN Questionnaire Augmentation

From symptom questionnaires to person-specific causal models: augmenting conventional psychopathology assessment with perceived causal networks

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From symptom questionnaires to person-specific causal models: augmenting conventional psychopathology assessment with perceived causal networks

Deutsch: Augmentierung validierter Psychopathologie-Fragebögen durch personenspezifische wahrgenommene Kausalnetzwerke

This project examines whether established psychopathology questionnaires can be augmented with a brief assessment of person-specific perceived causal relations between relevant questionnaire items.

Visual overview

flowchart LR
    A[Validated questionnaire] --> B[Relevant items]
    B --> C[Perceived causal relations]
    C --> D[Person-specific causal network]
    D --> E[Added value?]

See Figures for the full set of conceptual figures.

Core idea

  1. Participants complete a validated psychopathology questionnaire.
  2. Personally relevant items are selected from the questionnaire.
  3. Participants rate perceived causal influences between the selected problems.
  4. These ratings are transformed into an individualized Perceived Causal Network (PCN).
  5. The network can be visualized and shown back to the participant.
  6. We test whether this relational information provides incremental value beyond conventional questionnaire scores and item profiles.

See Project Concept, Research Questions, Study Design, and Validation Framework.

Central comparison

Conventional assessment: severity, scale scores, subscales, and item profile

Augmented assessment: conventional assessment plus person-specific relational information

The core empirical question is therefore not whether the network is “true”, but whether it captures reliable, person-specific, prognostically or clinically useful information that is not already contained in the questionnaire responses.

Key modules

Graph View