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Questionnaires are a common method in healthcare and clinical research to collect self-reported data on patients’ behaviour and outcomes rather than the clinician’s perspective. As a consequence there is a plethora of questionnaires and rating forms developed to measure a range of concepts such as health-related quality of life and health status. Given that these measures have been developed within a nomothetic paradigm to enhance our understanding of peoples self-perceived health status by translating complex personal feelings and experiences into a simple numeric score, the patient’s illness narrative is lost along the way. This commentary discusses the limitations of the nomothetic approach as completion of a questionnaire is a social and contextually orientated activity and that their development is best viewed within the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, based on sound qualitative methods and rigorous psychometric testing. The commentary discusses the philosophical orientation underpinning PROM development and argues the case for a pragmatic epistemology based on a mixed methods research paradigm which goes beyond the current practice of informing the content validity of a PROM in the early phase of its development but to work towards developing a more composite and holistic picture through mixed methods in the interpretation of a patient’s PROM score. Therefore, it is argued that the quality of data obtained will be enhanced but, also importantly and rightly places the participant at the centre of the research.

Introduction: Identification and attainment of the goals of cancer patients is an important aspect of personalized treatment. Aim of the study: The study aimed to assess the following aspects in patients treated surgically for endometrial cancer: 1) level of satisfaction with hospitalization using the EORTC IN-PATSAT32 nomothetic questionnaire; 2) degree of goals attainment using the Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) idiographic questionnaire; 3) correlation between these evaluation methods. Material and method: The study included 123 patients with endometrial cancer (FIGO I–II) treated surgically at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Rzeszów in 2012–2014. EORTC IN-PATSAT32 and GAS questionnaires were used. The collected material was analyzed using the Statistica 10.0 software. Results: The overall level of satisfaction measured with the IN-PATSAT32 scale was 72.2 ± 20.5. The technical skills were rated the highest in nurses (74.5 ± 17.6) and doctors (69.3 ± 17.8), while the lowest score was awarded for hospital assess (54.7 ± 23.3). The overall satisfaction with care was 72.2 ± 20.5. In the personalized GAS scale, the patients listed individual expectations before the surgery, assigning ranks to their importance. For most of them, it was a very high (A) or high (B) rank. The patients assigned the highest ranks to quick mobilization, success of the operation, and willingness to be healthy. The average value of the level of goal attainment on the discharge date was 63.7 ± 9.4 points. Statistically significant correlations between the questionnaires were found for the level of goal attainment and the assessment of various aspects of hospital care. Conclusions: The study proved that the EORTC IN-PATSAT32 questionnaire was correlated with GAS questionnaire, and additionally provided knowledge about individual goals of care and the degree of their attainment. The use of nomothetic and idiographic tools gives wider possibilities in the planning and implementation of personalized care.

The aim of the paper is an attempt to sum up the social teaching of popes on sport. The authors analyse the fundamental issues concerning human involvement in sport, focusing, among others, on the need for the presence of the Church in sport or on the significant role of sport in the harmonious development of young people. The following methods were used in the study: literature review, comparative, and axiological methods, as well as idiographic and nomothetic methods. The conducted analyzes show that the highest Church leaders invariably demand respect for fundamental human values, which also applies to sport, which, if properly directed, can play an important role in the process of education and promote propagation of Christian values.

The psychology of everyday life is one of the actively developing areas of modern Russian psychology. The leading theoretical and methodological sources of its development are history, anthropology and sociology of everyday life at the general scientific level of knowledge. Sources at the specific scientific level are the psychopathology of everyday life by Sigmund Freud, the field theory of Kurt Lewin, and the psychological concept of Hans Thomae. The demand for the ideas of Lewin is determined today by transformations of modernity, bringing to the fore the issues of socio-cultural dynamics and polymotivation of an individual, the clash of values and the subject’s conscious choice of a life path, formation of identity in changing life situations, and diversity of lifestyles in a complicated society. Everyday life is multi-layered, variegated, and heterogeneous. It presents the dynamics of the visible and invisible, real and surreal, modern and archaic. To detect gradual and imperceptible changes, it is often necessary to change the methodological toolkit. Lewin’s construct of “life space” in the context of the psychology of everyday life allows one to configure various aspects of human development in a situation of sociocultural transformations where social space can be both supportive and suppressive, and the spheres of private and public, personal and professional, mix. This results in a loss of normative boundaries. Cultural-psychological time in a common geographic space flows differently for people and communities, which not only creates risks of potential conflicts by drawing fault lines in the social fabric, but also poses the problem of a description language capable of combining nomothetic (revealing trends and patterns) and idiographic (directed analysis of unique cases) discourses. Lewin solved similar methodological and socio-political problems. It seems that his approach is very productive for the diagnosis and treatment of cultural and psychological trauma in Russian society. In the article, it is emphasized that the strategy of Lewin’s “action research” is close to the social constructivism of the Russian intellectual tradition, which makes it possible to comprehend the work of a psychologist as a solution to the problems of humanizing society and the education system.

The concept of illusory mental health is described as the rationale for needing an approach for working with individuals who are unaware of their suffering and are therefore unable to describe their problems through self-report instruments. The use of a nomothetic approach using self-report or clinician-generated standardised instruments is compared with an idiographic approach for working with such individuals. A case study is used to illustrate the development and first application of a Proxy-Generated Outcome Measure (PGOM) that allows clinicians, observers and researchers to trace an individualised understanding of a client’s core sufferings and changes occurring during the process of psychotherapy. A comparison with a nomothetic outcome measure is also presented.

In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to “more-than-human” beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human a priori impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband’s distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. “Theme and variation” proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche.

Pain is a complex, multidimensional experience that emerges from interactions among sensory, affective, and cognitive processes in the brain. Neuroimaging allows us to identify these component processes and model how they combine to instantiate the pain experience. However, the clinical impact of pain neuroimaging models has been limited by inadequate population sampling – young healthy college students are not representative of chronic pain patients. The biopsychosocial approach to pain management situates a person's pain within the diverse socioeconomic environments they live in. To increase the clinical relevance of pain neuroimaging models, a three-fold biopsychosocial approach to neuroimaging biomarker development is recommended. The first level calls for the development of diagnostic biomarkers via the standard population-based (nomothetic) approach with an emphasis on diverse sampling. The second level calls for the development of treatment-relevant models via a constrained person-based (idiographic) approach tailored to unique individuals. The third level calls for the development of prevention-relevant models via a novel society-based (social epidemiologic) approach that combines survey and neuroimaging data to predict chronic pain risk based on one's socioeconomic conditions. The recommendations in this article address how we can leverage pain's complexity in service of the patient and society by modeling not just individuals and populations, but also the socioeconomic structures that shape any individual's expectations of threat, safety, and resource availability.

Positive psychology interventions have been shown to increase individual well-being and happiness at a nomothetic level. We expand our understanding of their potential impact on individual’s self-leadership by adopting an idiographic approach. Moreover, we compare that effect with that of a goal-setting intervention. In a diary study using a randomized controlled design, 60 undergraduates were surveyed daily for 14 consecutive days before an exam and were assigned to one of three conditions: a “three good things” (TGT) intervention in which participants wrote down three positive things they had experienced during the day before going to bed; a “goal-setting” (GS) intervention in which they wrote down three learning goals for the next day; or a placebo control condition. Dynamic modeling of time series revealed that students in the TGT and the GS intervention significantly increased their self-leadership across time at a small to medium effect size. Students in the placebo control group showed no significant change. Contrary to expectations, the TGT intervention was not more strongly associated with self-related strategies, and the GS intervention was not more strongly associated with task-related strategies. This study demonstrates the value of a brief positive psychology intervention, which is comparably effective as a goal-setting intervention in fostering individual self-leadership in academic achievement settings.

This article introduces Psychobionomy as a general system seeking to explain and utilize the laws governing the mind, which it views as the source of all life. Although its remit is a great deal wider, herein, the system is discussed with particular reference to the pressing need for new paradigms in personality psychology. I describe the basics of the system and discuss how it can help address, recast, or transcend a range of enduring challenges in personality and individual differences, relating to issues of definition, structure, and practical application. Psychobionomy offers an original way of attending to and interpreting one's own direct experience of the phenomenal world. It places the Generic Ground of Pure Knowing at the heart of human experience, which gets progressively transmuted into Thinking, Feeling, Perceiving, and, finally, Acting in the world. In contrast to conventional approaches to information accumulation, Psychobionomy is an absolute psychological system that views the world as part of the individual, rather than the individual as part of the world. I provide examples of how two contemporary personality theories (trait emotional intelligence theory and belief-importance theory) can be accommodated within Psychobionomy and, subsequently, present a generic application of the system in the area of clinical counselling. I close with a discussion of two key challenges in personality psychology (viz., the integration of idiographic and nomothetic approaches and the restoration of the centrality of self-perceptions and their methodologies) from the perspective of Psychobionomy, which is recommended as a pathway to the realization of Self-Knowledge.

Current research and clinical practice in person-centred approaches highlight the importance of self, identity, and personal meanings in psychosis. Previous research has focused on dimensions of self, but less attention has been paid to the personal meanings involved in identity. The personal construct theory framework and the repertory grid technique (RGT) allow the study of identity and personal meanings within person-centred approaches of psychopathology and treatment in psychosis, as suggested by studies that began more than 40 years ago. However, their contributions have not yet been reviewed. We aimed to systematically review the evidence for the role of identity and personal meanings in psychotic disorders. We performed a systematic search using personal construct and RGT terms in PsycINFO, Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO, Scopus, and Google Scholar. After identifying 2,574 articles, 15 were included. Nine studies followed an idiographic assessment, and six were nomothetic. Patients reported their subjective experience of isolation in terms of high self-ideal discrepancy and high perceived discrepancy with their significant others, which some studies associated with a lower degree of recovery or with the way in which positive symptoms were construed. Self-fragmentation either decreased with interventions or was associated with recovery. Evidence regarding interpersonal construing was less consistent, but there was a tendency for patients to show a more rigid cognitive structure than controls. To conclude, we found some evidence that self-discrepancies, fragmentation of self, and interpersonal construing are affected in psychosis and potentially modifiable through psychotherapy.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine mechanisms underlying disparities in pain management among patients with psychological comorbidities. Studies have consistently shown that health care providers, health care trainees, and laypeople are susceptible to biased assessment and treatment decisions for patients presenting with pain. Further, psychological factors may influence the use of demographic and behavioral cues in pain assessment and treatment decisions. The present study employed innovative virtual human technology to capture decision-making approaches at both the group- and individual-level to better elucidate the influence of psychological factors, demographic cues, and pain-related body postures on pain assessment and treatment decisions. Patients and methods One hundred and thirty-two providers and trainees in the areas of nursing, physical therapy, and medicine viewed separate, empirically validated virtual human profiles that systematically varied across pain behaviors, anxiety status, race, and sex. Participants provided pain assessment and treatment ratings using a visual analog scale for each virtual human profile. Results Idiographic analyses revealed that participants used patient pain-related body postures most consistently and reliably across ratings. Nomothetic analyses showed anxious virtual humans were identified as having more anxiety and more likely to be recommended anti-anxiety medications, especially by female participants. Conclusion This innovative study successfully explored the influence of patient pain-related body postures, anxiety status, and demographic characteristics on pain management decisions with virtual human technology and a Lens model design. Results of this study can be used to better inform clinical practice, research, and education regarding the influence of patient variables on pain assessment and treatment decisions.

Behavioral researchers are concluding that conventional group-based analyses often mask meaningful individual differences and do not necessarily map onto the change processes within the lives of individual humans. Hayes et al. (2018) have called for a renewed focus on idiographic research, but with methods capable of nuanced multivariate insights and capable of scaling to nomothetic generalizations. To that end, we present a statistical technique we believe may be useful for the task: the dynamic p-technique. The dynamic p-technique can accommodate multivariate longitudinal data and may be used to conduct single-subject and group-level analyses. After introducing the dynamic p-technique, we provide several examples of how it may be used in practice by presenting the step-by-step analyses of single-subject daily-diary dataset wherein we examined the day-to-day associations between ADHD difficulties and psychotropic medication. Although it has been underutilized by behavioral researchers, we believe p-technique analyses are particularly well-suited to model personal dynamics with nuance and within context and allow researchers to inductively build from idiographic patterns to nomothetic trends. For a fine-grain walk-through of the analyses presented, including the data and statistical code, link to our supplemental materials https://osf.io/cbyj3/

Researchers have long called for greater recognition and use of longitudinal, individual-level research in the study of psychopathology and psychotherapy. Much of our current research attempts to indirectly investigate individual-level, or idiographic, psychological processes via group-based, or nomothetic, designs. However, results from nomothetic research do not necessarily translate to the individual-level. In this review, we discuss how idiographic analyses can be integrated into psychotherapy and psychotherapy research. We examine and review key statistical methods for conducting idiographic analyses. These methods include factor-based and vector autoregressive approaches using longitudinal data. The theoretical framework behind each approach is reviewed and critically evaluated. Empirical examples of each approach are discussed, with the aim of helping interested readers consider how they may use idiographic methods to analyze longitudinal data and psychological processes. Finally, we conclude by citing key limitations of the idiographic approach, calling for greater development of these analyses to ease their successful integration into clinical settings.

Self-discrepancy theory (SDT) is a model of the relations between the self and affect which has been applied to the study of different types of psychopathology including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Although the theory itself is compatible with a transdiagnostic perspective on psychopathology, to date no systematic review of the literature has examined that possibility. We conducted a meta-analysis that synthesized the literature on self-discrepancy and psychopathology across a heterogeneous range of 70 studies. Results showed a small-to-medium association between self-discrepancy and psychopathology that was highly robust and similar in magnitude across domains. Furthermore, self-discrepancy was related to higher levels of a range of negative emotions and lower levels of a range of positive emotions. Meta-regression models showed that the effects were greater for actual:ideal discrepancy compared with actual:ought discrepancy for both depression and anxiety, which was contrary to the tenets of SDT which suggests specific associations between actual:ideal discrepancy and depression and actual:ought discrepancy and anxiety. Measurement type (i.e., idiographic vs. nomothetic) was a significant predictor of the effects for depression and anxiety, such that nomothetic measures evidenced greater associations compared with idiographic measures. Our findings could suggest that self-discrepancy represents a contributory factor related to a number of psychiatric disorders. However, the tenet of SDT suggesting unique associations between actual:ideal and actual:ought discrepancy and anxiety and depression respectively was not supported. Implications are discussed for future research on self-discrepancy and psychopathology including the study of mechanistic frameworks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental health outcome measurement is conflicted between two different schools of thought which underlie the division between standardised (nomothetic) and individualised or patient-generated (idiographic) measures. The underpinning philosophies of both approaches have very different starting points in terms of how we understand the world. And yet the strengths of both may contribute something useful for patients and mental health services. We suggest a convergence of approaches with new thinking on options for co-habitation.

This article is devoted to the concept of integrative interpersonal theory of personality. The origins of the interpersonal theory of personality are found in interpersonal theory of psychiatry. This approach facilitates interdisciplinary conceptualizations of functioning and treatment by emphasizing the interpersonal situation as a prominent unit of analysis, organized by the metaconstructs of agency and communion and the interpersonal circumplex model. The interpersonal circumplex can serve as both companion and guide for those interested in exploring the interpersonal domain of personality. It is outlined the major assumptions and key concepts of the contemporary integrative interpersonal theory of personality. The features and the variety of studies, including several recent studies that extend integrative interpersonal theory are outlined. It is established that applications of the model for exploring both the idiographic (person‐centered) and nomothetic (variable‐centered) realms of personality. The contemporary interpersonal tradition assumes a pathoplastic relationship between interpersonal functioning and many forms of psychopathology. Key concepts of interpersonal theory: Copy process, Catalysts of internalization, Interpersonal motives, Regulatory Metagoals are described. The interpersonal nexus in psychology is a nomological net that provides the architecture to coordinate definition of personality. Given the advances in interpersonal theory and description discussed here, we would argue that agentic and communal personality characteristics should be essential components of an interdisciplinary science of personality psychology. Стаття присвячена аналізу сучасної інтегративної міжособистісної теорії особистості, що базується на міжособистісній теорії психіатрії, згідно з якою міжособистісна ситуація як одиниця аналізу дозволяє реалізувати міждисциплінарний підхід до діагностики, терапії та лікування пато­психологічних станів. При цьому наголошується, що утворений метаконструктами контекст комунікації по суті є моделлю міжособистісного комплексу, який дозволяє вивчати особистість комплексно, в кон­тексті інтегративного підходу, базуючись не лише на принципах патології, а й на принципах гуманізму. Окреслено основні поняття сучасної інтегративної міжособистісної теорії особистості: копінг-процеси, каталізатори інтерналізації, міжособистісні мотиви, регуляторні метацілі. Проаналізовано численні дослідження (зокрема сучасні), що не лише розкривають основні поняття інтегративної міжособистісної теорії, а й демонструють можливості її використання у практичній психології та психотерапії. Вста­новлено, що застосування інтегративної міжособистісної теорії для вивчення ідеографічних (орієнтованих на людину) та номотетичних (орієнтованих на норми) сфер дозволяють розглядати особистість комп­лексно, у взаємозв’язку її різних властивостей. Сучасна міжособистісна традиція передбачає зумовленість соціального функціонування міжособистісним контекстом, тобто міжособистісний аспект у психології є номологічною мережею, яка забезпечує основу для інтегративного визначення особистості. З урахуванням надбань міжособистісної теорії та досвіду її використання у практичній психології та психотерапії, констатується, що ключові її аспекти можуть вважатися основними компонентами міждисциплінарної психології особистості.

The current project measures personality across cultures, for the first time using a forced-choice (or idiographic) assessment instrument - the California Adult Q-set (CAQ). Correlations among the average personality profiles across 13 countries (total N = 2,370) ranged from r = .69 to r = .98. The most similar averaged personality profiles were between USA/Canada; the least similar were South Korea/Russia/Poland and China/Russia. The Czech Republic had the most homogeneous personality descriptions and South Korea had the least. In further analyses, country differences in CAQ-derived Big Five scores were compared to results obtained from previous research using nomothetic Likert scales (i.e., the NEO; the BFI). The Big Five templates produced generally similar findings to previous research comparing the Big Five across countries using Likert-type methods.

Objectives\ud \ud A primary methodological weakness of the single‐case experimental design (SCED) outcome studies conducted of the treatment of personality disorder with cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) is that they have failed to employ a withdrawal phase or cross‐over design and so are deemed quasi‐experimental. This study sought to implement a withdrawal design, in order to improve the internal validity of the study to make it a true SCED, and also in order to enable the patient to explore abandonment dynamics.\ud \ud \ud \ud Design\ud \ud The study employed an A1/B1/A2/B2 with extended follow‐up SCED with a female patient treated with CAT meeting diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Following the 6‐week baseline period ‘A1’, treatment occurred in two phases (21 sessions ‘B1’ and 24 sessions ‘B2’) sandwiching a 12‐week treatment withdrawal phase (‘A2’) and a 24‐week structured follow‐up phase. Seven idiographic daily measures were collected that created a N = 698 day timeline. Nomothetic outcome measures were collected at baseline and at the end of each phase of the study, and the Session Impact Scale was completed after each treatment session.\ud \ud \ud \ud Results\ud \ud There was a significant increase in the task focus of treatment sessions. Ideographically, CAT was an effective treatment for improving the participant’s self‐to‐self relationship, as their self‐hate reduced and their sense‐of‐self increased. There was a broad pattern of deterioration during the second treatment phase (B2) and follow‐up phase across the ideographic measures, and CAT was ineffective for BPD ideographic emotional or self‐to‐other measures. Reliable change occurred on the primary BPD nomothetic outcome measure from baseline to end of first treatment phase.\ud \ud \ud \ud Conclusions\ud \ud The study suggests that the CAT intervention was partially successful and that it is possible to integrate good research practice with clinical innovation. The methodological strengths and limitations of the design and the clinical implications of the results are discussed.\ud \ud \ud \ud Practitioner points\ud \ud Cognitive analytic therapy was partially effective in the treatment of BPD in a case that had been unresponsive to other psychological interventions.\ud \ud Therapists need to complete lengthy and structured follow‐up to capture any emerging relapse.\ud \ud Therapists need to discuss the patient’s thoughts and feelings about termination regularly in a relationally informed manner.

In many respects, Discourse Analysis is deeply rooted in inter- and trans-disciplinarity, and researchers have gradually acknowledged the relevance of post-disciplinarity to discourse studies. Regardless of the specific methodological frameworks which may aim to understand, explain, or substantiate discourse phenomena, and despite the approaches adopted (be they more nomothetic or idiographic, quantitative or qualitative, descriptive or prescriptive, contemplative or action-oriented), the analysis of discourse can benefit from the overcoming of static disciplinary categories. Post-disciplinarity perspectives do not necessarily equal but do, to some extent, enhance the reconciliation of diverse epistemic communities and the aggregation of isolated specializations. From this viewpoint, this approach should not be confused with eclecticism or a lack of systematicity, but is intended here as a plurality of views transcending fixed categories in order to integrate more dynamic and fluid frameworks which can be adapted to the peculiarities of different phenomena.

This chapter outlines five ideas that I have been working on for the last two decades through the dialogue with Jaan Valsiner and on the grounds of his semiotic, dynamic view of meaning: (A) abstraction - the need of general theories to model psychological phenomena, (B) emergence - meaning as coming from sensemaking, (C) dynamic holism - sensemaking requires to be modeled as a field dynamics, (D) affective semiosis - the affective grounds of sensemaking, and (E) abduction - idiographic and nomothetic knowledge are complementary, linked by abduction. In the conclusion, I will point out three main challenges drawing the future of cultural psychology: the formalization of semiotic dynamics, the bridge between functional and computational levels of analysis, and the development of a general theory of sociocultural change and intervention.

This chapter explores the contributions of DSR projects beyond the development of artifacts (idiographic science), directed to the analysis of projects that resulted in the development of theories (nomothetic science). Aiming to better understand the conditions for the occurrence of this phenomenon, the content analysis technique was applied to 92 articles that proposed DSR artifacts and, subsequently, to another 2,389 articles that cited the former.

In this introductory essay, we review the development of the second edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. We place the first edition in historical context and note the main responses and critiques of professional colleagues to its publication. We then outline the developing process of this second, comprehensively revised edition. Finally, we preview the contributions to this Special Issue. Overall, we emphasize the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual’s innovative diagnostic framework, designed to assess the depth as well as the surface of patients’ emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and social patterns and to foster in the field an integration between nomothetic understanding and the idiographic knowledge useful for case formulation and treatment planning.

This article maps a controversy in network science over the last 15 years, dividing the field about the epistemic status of a central notion, scale-freeness. The article accounts for the two main disputes, in 2005 and in 2018, as they unfolded in academic publications and on social media. This article analyzes the conflict, and the reasons why it reignited in 2018, to the surprise of many. It is argued that (1) the concept of complex networks is shared by the distinct subcultures of theorists and experimentalists; and that (2) these subcultures have incompatible approaches to knowledge: nomothetic (scale-freeness is the sign of a universal law) and idiographic (scale-freeness is an empirical characterization). Following Galison, this article contends that network science is a trading zone where theorists and experimentalists can trade knowledge across the epistemic divide.

OBJECTIVE Routine outcome monitoring and clinical feedback systems might be beneficial for adolescent psychotherapy processes. METHODS Clinicians (n = 34) and adolescent clients (n = 22) aged 14-19 from seven different outpatient clinics located in Norway participated in the study. Adolescents were interviewed in individual in-depth interviews (n = 7) or in four adolescent-only focus groups (n = 15), clinicians participated in seven clinician-only focus groups. RESULTS We report two core domains, (1) feedback about the therapeutic relationship and (2) feedback about the therapeutic work. Seven subthemes specify the functionality that participants need in a feedback system. CONCLUSION Adolescents and therapists requested a feedback system that was relationally oriented, supported collaborative action, and was personalized to the needs of the individual adolescent. The research indicates that a clinical feedback system should have idiographic, as well as nomothetic, components. A clinical feedback system for adolescents should monitor experiences of personal autonomy and the quality of the therapeutic relationship.

Governmental requirements of making use of evidence-based treatments on one side, and the family therapy field’s pluralism on knowledge sources on the other, may create a dilemma for the systemic clinician. This dilemma has also an epistemological relevance on research within the systemic field, addressing which research questions are relevant and needed, as well as applying the appropriate research methodology suited to answer these questions. This dilemma is in this chapter viewed in the light of two domains of knowledge, idiographic and nomothetic, that again are discussed from two perspectives: the sources of knowledge defined in evidence-based practice, combined with three levels of evidence. Central in this discussion is the objective of user involvement by applying systematic feedback that is suggested as a means to integrate the nomothetic and idiographic levels of knowledge. Further, it is also discussed how user involvement may work constructively to the dilemma between professional autonomy and increased governmental requirements.

I have been influenced by Professor Schneider in a number of ways. He is, of course, one of the pioneers of the policy network perspective (e. g., Schneider 1992; Kenis and Schneider 1991; Schneider, Dang-Nguyen and Werle 1994; Leifeld and Schneider 2012), and I have been influenced by his writings in this area.

In this introduction we will explore some of the differences and similarities between quantitative and qualitative research, and dispel some of the perceived mysteries within research. We will briefly introduce some of the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. There will also be an introduction to some of the philosophical assumptions that underpin quantitative and qualitative research methods, with specific mention made of ontological and epistemological considerations. These about the nature of existence (ontology) and how we might gain knowledge about the nature of existence (epistemology). We will explore the difference between positivist and interpretivist research, idiographic versus nomothetic, and inductive and deductive perspectives. Finally, we will also distinguish between qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research, gaining familiarity with attempts to bridge divides between disciplines and research approaches. Throughout this book, the issue of research-supported practice will remain an underlying theme. This chapter aims to support a research-based practice, aided by considering the multiple routes into research. The chapter encourages you to familiarise yourself with approaches ranging from phenomenological experiences to more nomothetic, generalising and comparing foci like outcome measuring and random control trials (RCTs), understood with a basic knowledge of statistics. The book introduces you to a range of research, guided by interest in separate approaches but also inductive—deductive combinations, as in grounded theory together with pluralistic and mixed methods approaches, all with a shared interest in providing support in the field of mental health and emotional wellbeing. Primarily, we hope that the chapter will encourage you to start considering your own research. Enjoy!

Scientific evidence in the field of psychiatry is mainly derived from group-based ("nomothetic") studies that yield group-aggregated results, while often the need is to answer questions that apply to individuals. Particularly in the presence of great inter-individual differences and temporal complexities, information at the individual-person level may be valuable for personalized treatment decisions, individual predictions and diagnostics. The single-subject study design can be used to make inferences about individual persons. Yet, the single-subject study is not often used in the field of psychiatry. We believe that this is because of a lack of awareness of its value rather than a lack of usefulness or feasibility. In the present paper, we aimed to resolve some common misconceptions and beliefs about single-subject studies by discussing some commonly heard "facts and fictions." We also discuss some situations in which the single-subject study is more or less appropriate, and the potential of combining single-subject and group-based study designs into one study. While not intending to plea for single-subject studies at the expense of group-based studies, we hope to increase awareness of the value of single-subject research by informing the reader about several aspects of this design, resolving misunderstanding, and providing references for further reading.

The current study examined the personal strivings of mentally tough Australian Rules footballers. Data collection occurred in two phases. Phase one included conducting two focus groups with coaches and performance staff from an Australian Football League (AFL) club/franchise, to gain a culturally-specific mental toughness (MT) conceptualisation. This conceptualisation was used to identify mentally tough footballers (n = 7) from the club’s playing group. In phase two, the selected footballers completed a personal goal strivings exercise (e.g., listing strivings, rating their commitment to them), which was subsequently coded for general and motivational themes, through nomothetic and idiographic lenses. Nomothetic analysis revealed broad trends consistent with previous MT research. Key themes included a high commitment to goals, high confidence, and achievement orientation. Focusing on four specific players, an idiographic analysis revealed different motivational agendas, including characteristically mentally tough motives, narcissistic motives, communion and growth motives, and vulnerable/anxious motives. In conclusion, despite broad themes aligning with current perspectives of MT, on an individual level, mentally tough athletes’ motivational concerns may vary. These findings stress the potential importance of examining goals as a central construct in conceptualising MT. Moreover, they challenge a universal assumption that MT operates in the same way across all performers, highlighting the need for greater idiographic analysis in MT research.

BACKGROUND There have been two kinds of methods for assessing individuals' motivation and their goal-striving behavior. The idiographic method obtains respondents' individual descriptions of their behavior or inner experiences. The nomothetic approach uses a standardized questionnaire in which respondents select from a set of alternatives. Idiographic responses provide rich, individualized information, but they make comparisons across different individuals difficult. By contrast, the nomothetic approach loses valuable individualized information, but it readily lends itself to cross-individual comparisons. OBJECTIVE The present authors have developed a family of motivational assessment instruments within the framework of the Goal Theory of Current Concerns and individuals' goal pursuits. Each of these instruments is a hybrid version of the idiographic and nomothetic methods. Each one obtains individualized information about each respondent at the start of the assessment, but it then utilizes rating scales that allow comparisons across different individuals to be made. The objective of the present article is to present this family of hybridized instruments for potential use in routine outcome monitoring. METHOD The method used in this article was to review the development of this family of hybrid assessments instruments over the preceding decades and the research on their psychometric properties and clinical applications. These hybrid tools include the Interview Questionnaire, Work Concerns Inventory, Motivational Structure Questionnaire, and Personal Concerns Inventory and their variants. The review includes only the idiographic-nomothetic approaches that are based on the Goal Theory of Current Concerns. RESULTS The review reveals that for each instrument, motivational indices are calculated, which have been shown to be valid and reliable. Analyses have also revealed adaptive and maladaptive motivational factors. CONCLUSIONS The measures discussed here have proven useful in clinical applications, when, for example, they are used as components of Systematic Motivational Counseling and the Life Enhancement and Advancement Programme for helping individuals improve their motivational structure. Similarly, the measures hold promise for use in routine outcome monitoring.

Since its beginnings, personality psychology has focused on both nomothetic and idiographic questions, but nomothetic approaches have captured the majority of attention in the past century. In this article, we demonstrate how recent measurement and modeling techniques provide an avenue for testing idiographic propositions about the dynamic features of a personality system. Findings indicate that people have unique structures of personality and that these structures are sensitive to situations people encounter. At the same time, these unique, mutable systems show longitudinal consistency for some but not all people.

Published: 30 July 2018 This Article explores the legalization characteristics of the investment rules of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Measured against orthodox and external benchmarks, ASEAN's investment regime is relatively limited. We make the following two arguments in this Article. First, we argue that while ASEAN members have subscribed to global norms in their own collective investment rules, they have done so in an intentionally selective manner shaped fundamentally by key contextual dynamics. These encompass a complex combination of ASEAN members' unique deliberation modality (the ASEAN Way) informed by their shared historical experience coupled with negative social learning. Using those insights, we suggest that is both possible and desirable to understand the ASEAN approach as an independent and legitimate form of legalization, rather than as a failed or flawed model. Second, and relatedly, we argue that the idiographic nature of legalization in ASEAN compels us to rethink the conventional universal (nomothetic) approach to legalization and embrace a more nuanced conception.

History and case study are two diachronic research strategies commonly used to study political discourse as it relates to public libraries. Though suitable for some studies, these strategies are inexhaustive. A new, blended research strategy is therefore needed to accomplish what history and case study alone cannot. This hybrid strategy, historical case study, must analyze cases from the distant past to the present, using eclectic data sources, in order to produce both idiographic and nomothetic knowledge. To develop historical case study, the universal components of diachronic analysis are first identified. A general research design for historical case study is then introduced. Finally, historical case study is tested in an actual research project. Findings from this project reveal that historical case study is a successful diachronic research strategy. Historical case study is a new and valuable research design suitable for addressing questions related to change, continuity, development, and evolution.

Background Control systems engineering methods, particularly, system identification (system ID), offer an idiographic (i.e., person-specific) approach to develop dynamic models of physical activity (PA) that can be used to personalize interventions in a systematic, scalable way. The purpose of this work is to: (1) apply system ID to develop individual dynamical models of PA (steps/day measured using Fitbit Zip) in the context of a goal setting and positive reinforcement intervention informed by Social Cognitive Theory; and (2) compare insights on potential tailoring variables (i.e., predictors expected to influence steps and thus moderate the suggested step goal and points for goal achievement) selected using the idiographic models to those selected via a nomothetic (i.e., aggregated across individuals) approach. Method A personalized goal setting and positive reinforcement intervention was deployed for 14 weeks. Baseline PA measured in weeks 1–2 was used to inform personalized daily step goals delivered in weeks 3–14. Goals and expected reward points (granted upon goal achievement) were pseudo-randomly assigned using techniques from system ID, with goals ranging from their baseline median steps/day up to 2.5× baseline median steps/day, and points ranging from 100 to 500 (i.e., $0.20–$1.00). Participants completed a series of daily self-report measures. Auto Regressive with eXogenous Input (ARX) modeling and multilevel modeling (MLM) were used as the idiographic and nomothetic approaches, respectively. Results Participants (N = 20, mean age = 47.25 ± 6.16 years, 90% female) were insufficiently active, overweight (mean BMI = 33.79 ± 6.82 kg/m2) adults. Results from ARX modeling suggest that individuals differ in the factors (e.g., perceived stress, weekday/weekend) that influence their observed steps/day. In contrast, the nomothetic model from MLM suggested that goals and weekday/weekend were the key variables that were predictive of steps. Assuming the ARX models are more personalized, the obtained nomothetic model would have led to the identification of the same predictors for 5 of the 20 participants, suggesting a mismatch of plausible tailoring variables to use for 75% of the sample. Conclusion The idiographic approach revealed person-specific predictors beyond traditional MLM analyses and unpacked the inherent complexity of PA; namely that people are different and context matters. System ID provides a feasible approach to develop personalized dynamical models of PA and inform person-specific tailoring variable selection for use in adaptive behavioral interventions.

As articulated by Marc H. Bornstein, the Specificity Principle explains that specific outcomes in human development always involve coaction of specific individuals at specific times in specific places through specific processes. The articles in this Special Issue document contributions to developmental science through theory-predicated and methodologically rigorous and innovative research framed by the Specificity Principle. These articles illuminate some of the many ways in which the Specificity Principle improves research and applications aimed at advancing positive human development. The Specificity Principle encompasses diverse individuals, ontogenetic and historical periods, as well as national and cultural boundaries. It provides a regulative tenet that contrasts with nomothetic and/or variable-centered approaches to human development. It brings systematicity to the idiographic approach to human ontogeny by identifying individual and contextual conditions that promote specificity versus commonality in human development. As documented by the articles and commentary included in this Special Issue, the Specificity Principle underscores the ways in which each person can thrive across time and place and so enables developmental scientists to comprehensively describe, explain, predict, and enhance human development.

In this paper, we will discuss the possibility of understanding experimental studies on cultural transmission processes from an articulation between the particular–general relation in the construction of knowledge, with an approximation between the notions of Nomothetic and Idiographic science. For this, we discuss data collected from an experimental project about the cultural transmission process drawing our attention, as much to the continuities as the discontinuities present in the process. Our discussions pointed to the need to consider, in experimental studies, the particular actions and significations of research participants, as well as the generalization that is dialogically constructed in the collectivity. With this in mind, it is proposed that at least three theoretical-methodological aspects cannot be lost sight of when considering the experimental study of the cultural transmission process: (1) the relation between Idiographic and Nomothetic science; (2) interdependent relational processes that occur between particularities and generalities; and (3) the need to appreciate continuities and discontinuities as part of the process of construction and analysis of experimental projects.

Objective: Dichotomizing clinical trials designs into nomothetic (e.g., randomized clinical trials or RCTs) versus idiographic (e.g., N-of-1 or case studies) precludes use of an array of hybrid designs and potential research questions between these extremes. This paper describes unique clinical evidence that can be garnered using idiographic clinical trials (ICTs) to complement RCT data. Proposed and illustrated herein is that innovative combinations of design features from RCTs and ICTs could provide clinicians with far more comprehensive information for testing treatments, conducting pragmatic trials, and making evidence-based clinical decisions. Method: Mixed model trajectory analysis and unified structural equations modeling were coupled with multiple baseline designs in (a) a true N-of-1 pilot study to improve severe autism-related communication deficits and (b) a small sample preliminary study of two complimentary interventions to relieve wheelchair discomfort. Results: Evidence supported certain mechanisms of treatment outcomes and ruled out others. Effect sizes included mean phase differences (i.e., effectiveness), trajectory slopes, and differences in path coefficients between study phases. Conclusions: ICTs can be analyzed with equivalent rigor as, and generate effect sizes comparable to, RCTs for the purpose of developing hybrid designs to augment RCTs for pilot testing innovative treatment, efficacy research on rare diseases or other small populations, quantifying within-person processes, and conducting clinical trials in many situations when RCTs are not feasible.

Organizational scientists must capitalize on the big data revolution to better understand the nomothetic, idiographic, multilevel, and/or dynamic processes that make up today’s workplace. Simultaneously, researchers must collect high-quality data and be careful, diligent, and deliberate during data wrangling and data analysis so that all results can be replicated and all inferences are appropriate. Unfortunately, big data create many uncommon challenges during data acquisition and data wrangling that must be considered and overcome to fulfill the promise and potential of big data. Specifically, during acquisition, organizational scientists must become familiar with concepts like web scraping and databases, determine how to divide big data files into manageable chunks for cleaning and analysis, all while ensuring not to violate data usage rules and regulations. Likewise, once acquired, to effectively wrangle data so that they are ready for analysis researchers must be able to handle multiple file formats and data encoding standards, utilize a variety of software to visualize and diagnose data structure, and be adept at using functions and algorithms to determine variable structure and evaluate records and variables for missing or erroneous information. The current article provides a concise definition of big data and addresses each of these novel challenges and concepts related to big data acquisition and wrangling, specifically focusing on providing guidance and recommendations. Finally, a detailed big data example, team development using play-by-play basketball data, is provided. Each step of the process of scraping the data from the web as well as wrangling the multilevel big data into tidy data form is discussed, accompanied by a supplemental R file that contains all of the code necessary for researchers to replicate the described procedure.

SummaryObjectives: The understanding of how stress influences health behavior can provide insights into developing healthy lifestyle interventions. This understanding is traditionally attained through observational studies that examine associations at a population level. This nomothetic approach, however, is fundamentally limited by the fact that the environment- person milieu that constitutes stress exposure and experience can vary substantially between individuals, and the modifiable elements of these exposures and experiences are individual-specific. With recent advances in smartphone and sensing technologies, it is now possible to conduct idiographic assessment in users’ own environment, leveraging the full-range observations of actions and experiences that result in differential response to naturally occurring events. The aim of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that an ideographic N-of-1 model can better capture an individual’s stress- behavior pathway (or the lack thereof) and provide useful person-specific predictors of exercise behavior.Methods: This paper used the data collected in an observational study in 79 participants who were followed for up to a 1-year period, wherein their physical activity was continuously and objectively monitored by actigraphy and their stress experience was recorded via ecological momentary assessment on a mobile app. In addition, our analyses considered exogenous and environmental variables retrieved from public archive such as day in a week, daylight time, temperature and precipitation. Leveraging the multiple data sources, we developed prediction algorithms for exercise behavior using random forest and classification tree techniques using a nomothetic approach and an N-of-1 approach. The two approaches were compared based on classification errors in predicting personalized exercise behavior.Results: Eight factors were selected by random forest for the nomothetic decision model, which was used to predict whether a participant would exercise on a particular day. The predictors included previous exercise behavior, emotional factors (e.g., midday stress), external factors such as weather (e.g., temperature), and self-determination factors (e.g., expectation of exercise). The nomothetic model yielded an average classification error of 36%. The ideographic N-of-1 models used on average about two predictors for each individual, and had an average classification error of 25%, which represented an improvement of 11 percentage points.Conclusions: Compared to the traditional one-size-fits-all, nomothetic model that generalizes population-evidence for individuals, the proposed N-of-1 model can better capture the individual difference in their stressbehavior pathways. In this paper, we demonstrate it is feasible to perform personalized exercise behavior prediction, mainly made possible by mobile health technology and machine learning analytics.

In this invited commentary, I provide an historical and conceptual context for “The Future of Intervention Science: Process-Based Therapy” by Stefan Hofmann and Steven Hayes (this issue, p. 37). Special attention is paid to the importance of change mechanisms in psychological intervention, the use of functional analysis instead of categorical schemes such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and treatment manuals in randomized clinical trials, and the challenge of applying nomothetic principles to individual cases. Historical context is provided for prior examination of these core issues in numerous articles and books extending back for over 60 years.

Objectives: A methodological obstacle for the assessment of psychotherapy process concerns the compatibility between nomothetic versus idiographic approaches. Using quantitative methodology at an i...

Monism or plurality as a theoretical foundation of psychology? Traditionally, the sciences have been divided into the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Natural sciences consider objective, i. e. thirdperson entities, whereas the humanities concern subjective intentional processes that depend on first-person interpretation. This leads to a dualistic dichotomy of nomothetic versus idiographic approaches. Now what about psychology, the science of (first-person) experience and (third-person) behavior? The development of this discipline has put forward dualistic and monistic, mental and physiological theories in rapid succession, which is perpetuated in today’s (dualistic and pluralistic) cognitive-behavioral psychology on the one hand and the (monistic) neuroscience reductions on the other. Some reductionists, particularly in clinical psychology, even favor the monistic approach of social constructivism. Thus, the discussion in the discipline of psychology has remained at a clearly pluralistic, possibly pre-paradigmatic, stage. We argue that no reductive solution is in sight - so that psychology should openly acknowledge its dual aspects of mind and body. This dual-aspect approach should be supported by a structural science foundation. The structural-mathematical science of complexity and synergetics can offer concepts and laws that are valid in both the physical and mental domains - analogous pattern formation schemes govern both physical-behavioral and mental-intentional processes.

Within the developmental literature, there is an often unspoken tension between studies that aim to capture broad scale, fairly universal nomothetic traits, and studies that focus on mechanisms and trajectories that are idiographic and bounded to some extent by systematic individual differences. The suitability of these approaches varies as a function of the specific research interests at hand. Although the approaches are interdependent, they have often proceeded as parallel research traditions. The current review notes some of the historical and empirical bases for this divide and suggests that each tradition would benefit from incorporating both methodological approaches to iteratively examine universal (nomothetic) phenomena and the individual differences (idiographic) factors that lead to variation in development. This work may help isolate underlying causal mechanisms, better understand current functioning, and predict long-term developmental consequences. In doing so, we also highlight empirical and structural issues that need to be addressed to support this integration.

Personality and psychopathology are composed of dynamic and interactive processes among diverse psychological systems, manifesting over time and in response to an individual's natural environment. Ambulatory assessment techniques promise to revolutionize assessment practices by allowing access to the dynamic data necessary to study these processes directly. Assessing manifestations of personality and psychopathology naturalistically in an individual's own ecology allows for dynamic modeling of key behavioral processes. However, advances in dynamic data collection have highlighted the challenges of both fully understanding an individual (via idiographic models) and how s/he compares with others (as seen in nomothetic models). Methods are needed that can simultaneously model idiographic (i.e., person-specific) processes and nomothetic (i.e., general) structure from intensive longitudinal personality assessments. Here we present a method, group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME) for simultaneously studying general, shared (i.e., in subgroups), and person-specific processes in intensive longitudinal behavioral data. We first provide an introduction to the GIMME method, followed by a demonstration of its use in a sample of individuals diagnosed with personality disorder who completed daily diaries over 100 consecutive days. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).