CSPP Founder and CSPP Alumna Bring Institute for Behavior Assessment and Research (IBAR) to Alliant

San Francisco & San Diego December 14, 2007 The Everstine's Brainchild, IBAR, has already begun to yield results

Thanks to one of the founders of the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP) one of its alumnae, current students now have an institute that can help them with their dissertations by providing research subjects, consultation about research design and data analyses. The Institute for Behavior Assessment and Research (IBAR) brainchild of Drs. Diana and Louis Everstine.

Dr. Diana Everstine is a CSPP alumna. Her husband and research collaborator, Dr. Louis Everstine, was a founding faculty member of CSPP.

The idea behind the database is simple: to provide a library of objective psychological data for students and faculty to use in their dissertation and other research projects. The library has been in existence only for six months, but already holdss objective test and demographic data on 5,500 subjects in its database.

“This is a growing entity,” says Diana Everstine. "It is truly an evolving data library. People are really getting excited about the idea of a library of objective data that students and faculty can use as research subjects and/or control groups. We have designed the IBAR database to be very easy to use. Once the student has gone through the approval process and committee members have signed-off on IBAR forms, the data can be quickly downloaded into an Excel spread sheet or a statistical package. We have made the database as secure as your bank account because it holds very sensitive information, such as objective test and clinical data, pre-employment test data, data on drug and alcohol use, and data on sexual or criminal behavior. All names and personal identifiers are removed to guarantee anonymity and comply with APA standards. Case numbers are computer-generated, and the data are encrypted according to HIPAA standards.”

Interested students need simply to go to the IBAR website and fill out an application to use data from IBAR; all necessary forms are available online.

When Diana Everstine was first accepted at CSPP in 1971, she was an artist and planned to pursue a degree in art therapy. But, when she started to take research courses, she discovered the creative potential of research as well as the powerful potential that research has for social change by refuting erroneous assumptions about people. “I took to it like a duck to water; my fellow students were shocked,” she says. “Many people don’t realize that data analysis and research are a form of art; it’s just a different medium. Good published research has enormous potential to inform and create change.”

Students, faculty members and alumni are encouraged to submit any objective tests data that they may have. “It’s like the clothes you have in the back of your closet that you plan to wear when you lose five pounds. Many professionals have tons of unused test data; now, there is a means to make use of them. This is another way for people to donate to the University -- by helping to build this data library.” Faculty and alumni can also request that their existing data be organized or analyzed in preparation for publication; IBAR can provide this service.

IBAR's main goals are to facilitate the dissertation process by providing research subjects and/or control groups, research design, consultation and data analyses.

Users of database are expected to be mutually supportive. “At this point, all we ask in return for use of the database is that, if researchers have new data, they donate them to the database for others to use. If you use our information, we expect you to share your research,” says Diana.

Even though the website is a work in progress, it’s already very comprehensive. It includes data from subjects representing 38 different ethnic groups, many with mixed ethnicity. One student is developing research on the Sikh population. Four students, under the supervision of CSPP Professor and IBAR board member, Dr. Ron Stolberg, are already using or planning to use the database for their dissertation studies.

“I was fortunate enough to use some of the data from IBAR in my dissertation,” said Owen Bargreen, who recently defended his dissertation titled “MMPI-2 Personality Profiles of Male Victims of Domestic Violence.”

Fourth-year PsyD student Jessica Romo is using IBAR to gather psychometric data on serial killers. “IBAR has MMPI profiles of serial murderers, and I am using these data along with other MMPI profiles that I have gathered for my dissertation, currently titled ‘An Examination of the Psychosocial and MMPI Characteristics of Serial Murderers.’ I have found IBAR very helpful as a resource for examining psychometric data of specific populations that may be difficult to obtain elsewhere,” said Romo. “The benefit of using the database is that it is a central location for the examination of empirical data on specific areas of research.”

Kristina Disney, a fifth-year student pursuing a dual PhD in Clinical and Industrial/Organizational Psychology, is planning to use MMPI-2 profiles from the IBAR database to compare domestic violence offenders with non-domestic violence offenders for her dissertation titled “Utilizing the MMPI-2 Content Scales, the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, and the Attitudes toward Women Scale in Predicting Domestic Violence Potential.” She described her interaction with IBAR as helpful and constructive.

Allyson Krohe is using the IBAR database for her dissertation on firefighter selection.

“When I was a student going through the dissertation process, one of the most difficult problems faced by me or other students was finding subjects and/or control groups," said Diana. "At IBAR, we are trying to make this process easier.”

IBAR website

If you have objective test data that you wish to donate to IBAR, email IBAR and describe the data. IBAR can either send a data-entry person to collect or organize the data at your location, or arrange for them to be sent to IBAR for data-entry. After data-entry, the data can be returned to the alumnus or faculty member, or stored in IBAR’s secure storage repository.