One of the most encouraging, but also the most challenging, aspects of current research
on psychopathology is the diversity of measures used to assess constructs across research
studies and programs. Clearly, this diversity reflects the creativity and generativity
of our field and the continual growth of our science. At the same time, however, this
diversity also makes data harmonization across studies difficult, if not sometimes
impossible. The National Human Genome Research Institute recognized this conundrum
in the field of genetics and started an initiative referred to as consensus measures
for Phenotypes and eXposures (PhenX) to identify and recommend a small number of measures
for each of 21 broad research domains that could be used as common assessments to
facilitate integration across genome-wide association studies (
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
). These measures are made available to the scientific community, at no cost, in the
PhenX Toolkit (https://www.phenxtoolkit.org). Subsequently, the PhenX consensus process was used to identify measures in support
of substance abuse and addiction (SAA) research, adding depth to the toolkit in this
area. This project was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) with
the participation of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Perhaps
due to a growing awareness of the need to share data across studies to increase statistical
power and study impact, a number of other common data element programs have been underway,
including the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (
5
), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox (
6
), the Neurological Quality of Life (
7
), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Common Data Elements
program (
8
,
9
), and the NIH Common Data Elements program (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cde/). The program staff at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), as well as
its funded researchers, have also recognized the challenges posed by a lack of common
measures across studies. The NIMH has taken note of this recent emphasis on larger
scale studies to address core questions about the mechanisms of psychopathology and
recent attempts at data harmonization across studies of psychopathology that address
similar issues. Accordingly, the NIMH felt that it was time to identify brief, low-burden
measures that NIMH-funded researchers could include in their studies to increase cross-study
data compatibility. The goal of the current report is to briefly describe the genesis
and development of the PhenX project, to outline the process that the Mental Health
Research Panel used to select a set of common measures, to describe the measures themselves,
and to outline the goals associated with including these measures in future studies.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: February 20, 2016
Accepted:
July 15,
2015
Received in revised form:
July 13,
2015
Received:
June 3,
2015
Identification
Copyright
Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Society of Biological Psychiatry
