Modifying an Instrument Posted on February 26, 2006 Peter Mangione (bio) describes two circumstances in which a researcher may consider modifying an existing instrument.

There are two cases in which you would consider modifying an instrument. With those instruments that are published in the literature with rights owned by a testing company, it's very hard to modify that. It's very hard to get permission to do that. It becomes a very touchy subject because often the company and the creator not only have the intellectual property rights but they also tie training to their tools, so you have to go get trained by them to use their tool. They don't look kindly to people who want to modify their tool usually unless you can make a good case with them. Sometimes you can through interaction, collegiality with a developer of a test you can make some arrangements for doing some modifications, but it's going to have to be agreeable to that person who developed the test, and if you have some creative idea that takes it in another direction, it's unlikely you're going to get that agreement.

The other case is a measure that's been used in the literature. It's some researcher, well-known or not so well-known, who creates a measure to look at a particular phenomenon, a particular kind of child functioning, and you like some parts of it, but you want to change it for your particular circumstances. Usually through exchange with that person you can make those modifications. When you do it, I think you have to have a very good reason for doing it and justify it well because again, you're going to run into the problem of "Why did you this? It's different. Why did you just do something already and build on the work completely that way?" I would again go back to being very clear why you're making this change. It can't be simply for convenience. There has to be a sound theoretical reason for making the modifications you're making.

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