Exploring Cost-effective Approaches to Behavioral Analysis Through Established Questionnaires

Conducting behavioral analysis and administering questionnaires at the start of psychotherapy is time consuming and costly. This study explores a new approach linking diagnostic information across disorders to behavioral response categories (BRCs) used in behavioral analysis addressing the research gap concerning the integration of behavioral analysis into questionnaire-based diagnostic methods. Clinical psychologists assigned SCL-90-R items to one of four response variables (emotional, cognitive, physiological, behavioral). Three groups emerged: items unequivocally assigned to one BRC, items assigned to multiple BRCs (combined M var = 296.15), and items that couldn't be assigned due to expert disagreement, ambiguous formulations, or enumerations in items ( M var = 109.97). The feasible approach enables receiving multiple types of diagnostic information while only executing one questionnaire, potentially enabling cost-effective diagnostics, reducing therapy time, and making treatment more accessible to individuals with lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The findings emphasize the importance of semantic clarity in item formulations.