A Web Based Tool to Support a
Personalized Therapeutic Path Through the
Use of Psychological Tests
Elena LAZAROVA
a, 1
, Sara MORA
a
, Davide ARMANINO
b
, Alessandro POIRE
b
,
Fabio FURLANI
c
, and Mauro GIACOMINI
a
a
Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering
(DIBRIS), University of Genoa, Italy
b
Genoa Constructivist Association, Genoa, Italy
c
Como Cognitive Therapy Center, Via Rusconi 10, Como, Italy
Abstract. Psychology tests are tools used to evaluate specific aspects of individual
psyche and behavior, in clinical practice and for research purposes. They are
validated and standardized both in the administration procedures and interpretation
of results. Nowadays, most of these tests are questionnaires administered to patients
on paper support. The patient’s answers to the questionnaires constitute a basis for
self-presentation and self-awareness at the beginning of the therapeutic path. The
computer is a valuable aid allowing a quickly consultation of all the answers and
highlighting the most salient ones. The main aim of this work was to design, develop
and test a computerized support tool for the interpretation of psychological tests that
allow good interaction between groups of therapists sharing the same operating
modes. The developed system allows: first the storing of the numerical values
corresponding to the answers to the questionnaires of the patients; then it creates a
complete ’Picture’ of the patient and allows the automatic computation of the
correlation between the indexes of the various scales. The graphical correlations
between scales can be also a valuable aid in finding the outliers, so patients far away
from the trend line.
Keywords. Psychological test interpretation, web based professional collaboration,
correlation matrix, outliers identification, Z-score normalization
1. Introduction
Psychology tests are tools used to evaluate specific aspects of individual psyche and
behavior, in clinical practice and for research purposes. They are validated and
standardized both in the administration procedures and interpretation of results. They
rely on statistical methods that allow the performance comparison between the tested
group of people and the controls. Psychological tests can be divided into two main
categories: personality tests, aimed at identifying the individual’s personality traits, and
efficiency tests, aimed at investigating the individual’s knowledge and skills. Nowadays,
most of these tests are questionnaires administered to patients on paper support. The
patient can choose within a set of fixed answers. This choice, widely shared by virtually
1
Corresponding Author: Elena Lazarova, Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and
System Engineering (DIBRIS), University of Genoa, Italy; E-mail: elena.lazarova@dibris.unige.it
pHealth 2021
B. Blobel and M. Giacomini (Eds.)
© 2021 The authors and IOS Press.
This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
doi:10.3233/SHTI210600
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