Although this position represents a departure from common research practice, it represents a straightforward application of familiar psychometric principles. Clinical researchers are well positioned to focus on homogeneous measures of psychological entities. In a sense, we are only arguing that clinical researchers take their own psychometric theories seriously; they should avoid both complex items and complex scales, in order to best approximate human psychological functioning with their measures. Researchers have increasingly begun to apply this perspective in recent years. As a result, they have identified coherent, homogeneous dimensions of function and dysfunction, thereby positioning the field for significant advances in understanding psychopathology.
