Interpreting and inverting with less cursing: A guide to interpreting IRAP data

Highlights

• The IRAP is a procedure used to assess the "strength" of relational responding.

• We clarify the steps involved in scoring and interpreting IRAP data.

• Correct scoring and inversion techniques are key to appropriate statistical analysis.

Abstract

This Professional Interest Brief seeks to provide a clear guide to interpreting data generated by Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). The interpretation of IRAP data is not immediately intuitive and yet has received little explicit attention in the published literature. As such, it is hoped that this guide will help clarify this matter, particularly for those new to using the IRAP or intending to use the measure in the future. In doing so, we hope to make the measure more accessible and facilitate continued use of the methodology and its contribution to the contemporary Relational Frame Theory (RFT) literature.

Introduction

One of the cornerstones of Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS: Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Wilson, 2012) is its appeal to a basic account of human language and cognition through Relational Frame Theory (RFT). Relational Frame Theory argues that the fundamental building block of human cognitive abilities, such as abstract reasoning and generative language is “arbitrarily applicable relational responding” (AARR: see Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche, 2001). Much early RFT research revolved around demonstrating its proposed analytic units, relational frames, that were established in the laboratory (see Hughes and Barnes-Holmes, in press, for review). However, in recent years, RFT researchers have attempted to extend RFT's conceptual account by also assessing histories of relational responding that were established outside of the laboratory (see Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, and Hussey, in press; Hussey, Barnes-Holmes, and Barnes-Holmes, 2015), such as by posing questions about the probability or “strength” of individuals' relational responding in applied domains such as obsessive compulsive tendancies, depression, or professional burnout (see Nicholson and Barnes-Holmes, 2012a, Hussey and Barnes-Holmes, 2012, Kelly and Barnes-Holmes, 2013, respectively). In order to do this, RFT researchers have built on methodologies frequently used in cognitive and social psychology to assess what are referred to as “implicit attitudes” (see De Houwer and Moors, 2010; see also Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, and Vahey, 2012). This has produced a procedure that has shown utility in assessing the relative strength of relational responding: the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP: Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, Stewart, & Boles, 2010). IRAP research now represents one of the forefronts of RFT research (Barnes-Holmes et al., in press).