An open participatory protocol for the ecological development and validation of the interactional disruption profile

This article presents an open participatory protocol for the ecological development and validation of the Interactional Disruption Profile, a clinical assessment instrument intended to assess observable nonverbal behaviors that may contribute to interactional disruption during real-time interactions. Grounded in current standards for psychological testing, the protocol integrates psychometric, ecological, and implementation-related considerations throughout instrument development. The procedure is structured into three phases: (1) test development (project governance, intended use, construct definition, administration specifications, and candidate item generation); (2) test validation (content validation, pretesting, psychometric evaluation); and (3) test production (manual drafting & writing of the test manual). A Steering Committee involving researchers, clinicians, patients, and relatives will supervise the iterative co-construction of the instrument and contribute to methodological decision-making throughout development. Particular emphasis is placed on ecological validity and on explicitly documenting the methodological trade-offs involved in balancing psychometric robustness, contextual sensitivity, usability, and implementation constraints. Rather than prescribing the future characteristics of the instrument, the article proposes an open participatory protocol that structures the iterative development and validation process by ensuring that decisions are progressively informed by evidence, deliberated, documented, and refined. Beyond providing an open protocol suited to capturing context-dependent constructs such as complex interactional phenomena, the article illustrates how psychological testing standards may be applied within an ecologically grounded development and validation process.