Mobile und stationäre computerstützte psychometrische Diagnostik

Questionnaires are one of the foundations of psychometric measurement in clinical psychosomatics. We collected mobile computer-based assessments of psychometric data from more than 7000 patients between January 1995 and December 2002. Our experience has shown that this mobile approach enjoys a high acceptance among patients, is effective and two-thirds cheaper than conventional questionnaires using paper and pencil. This positive evaluation of mobile psychometric computer-based assessments is partly due to the high standardisation and item structure of questionnaires frequently used in psychosomatic diagnostics. Questionnaires with long item descriptions or a long list of choices are much harder to implement on a mobile platform. However, parallel assessments using mobile equipment, personal computers and paper and pencil questionnaires have to be integrated into the clinical data organisation. We report on recent developments of our psychometric assessment system which aim at further integration of different platforms in order to reduce organisational efforts. Another aspect of this development concerns how new psychometric methods such as computer adaptive testing can be used effectively in such an environment.