published but inaccessible test scales??

content/post/2023/10/about-published-but-inaccessible-test-scales.md

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+---
+title: "About Published But Inaccessible Test Scales"
+date: 2023-10-12T09:59:00+02:00
+categories:
+  - education
+tags:
+  - academia
+  - papers
+  - scale
+---
+
+My general conclusion after a day of digging through and studying a semi-random pile of academic papers on the subject of creative confidence is that authors put in disturbingly little effort to effectively make their results and created tools accessible to the general public. I even wonder why some high profile papers published in acclaimed Elsevier journals were accepted when half of their methodology consists of hand-waiving the reader to a ten year older paper that's not only behind closed doors but simply unfindable. 
+
+I presume you're expecting me to come up with an example in the next paragraph? Okay. Creative behavior is partially determined by previous creative effort, by socio-cultural influence, and partially by self-confidence---which, if you really want, can be further divided into creative self-efficacy and creative self-concept. For each of these terms, there exist scales to measure current confidence levels, such as the _Short Scale of Creative Self_ or _Creative SElf-Efficacy Scale_. Since I was just as confused as you probably are after getting slapped around by these terms, I wanted to take a look at the questionnaire itself that no doubt will help clear things up. 
+
+Except that I can't. The papers I found using the above scales obviously correctly cite their source, but never directly include the survey themselves, even though they proceed explaining in detail how the Likert-scale analysis was carried out, which is far less interesting than the questions themselves. Some papers dare to include one question "as an example": _I trust in my creative abilities_. Aha! But where's the rest? It's only a 6-item scale, for god's sake, just include the six damn questions!
+
+The reason why the source material is inaccessible has to do with money---of course it does. Unfortunately, most of these cognitive psychology-oriented papers are published in closed access journals, making them findable only to the select club of experts that are already familiar with the various concepts. For me as a researcher connected to a university that provides access to library sets, that in itself is a nuisance, but not necessarily a problem. For you as a non-academic person who's interested in the field, it is a problem, unless you use https://sci-hub.se/, hoping it correctly mirrored the reference, as I've found out that more often than not Sci-Hub doesn't have the requested document.
+
+The problem is worsened by my field of expertise. Most authoritative publications in cognitive psychology are published in venues connected to the American Psychology Association (APA), the largest scientific organization of psychologists in the United Stats, which happily gatekeeps anything that goes in. As a European university, KU Leuven, my institution, does _not_ provide access to APA-published works. Every single time one of my digs encounters an APA paper, I curse.  
+
+What's the purpose of you developing a scale when you put it behind closed doors? This is even dumber when the scale consists of just a few items that's easily repeatable in another paper. 
+
+---
+
+Another thing I noticed. It seems that very few scientists think beyond papers when it comes to promoting and publishing their work. The _Short Scale of Creative Self_ could easily be converted into a simple single `.html` webpage for anyone to access. Imagine that, anyone who can take the test, let's make sure that never happens, we cannot and will not have that!
+
+And yet that's exactly what we did with our own _Creative Programming Problem Solving Test_ (CPPST). Here's the test: https://brainbaking.com/cppst/ and it even comes with a nice summary after you're finished with it. Do with the questions whatever you want. They're also published in the book [The Creative Programmer](/works/the-creative-programmer). That's called _spreading the word_, you should try it sometime dear researcher. My hope is that if someone stumbles upon our papers where we used CPPST, that they just find it online. Either way, our papers are published as open access, and lo and behold, they just contain all questions. 
+
+Something I've seen research groups of our faculty do as well is to develop and publish a pilot version of a scale, only to commercialize and try to sell it afterwards. Even though I admit that funding is _very_ tight nowadays, especially in the field of engineering education, and I applaud original efforts to bring in some more, this practice only worsens the problem, as obviously the improved version of the test can no longer be open sourced, meaning it's once again closed off for the general public. 
+
+Most scales not even that useful. They're a quick quantitative way to help identify the first layer of the problem, but nothing more. 
+
+I wish universities would mandate (1) publishing works as open access and (2) the spreading of findings, results, and developed tools such as test scales through multiple channels. Even a simple webpage hosted by the faculty will do.