Dr. Jeremy Sharp (00:00.568)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharp, licensed psychologist, group practice owner, and private practice coach.
This episode is brought to you by PAR. Psychologists need assessment tools for a more diverse population these days. PAR is helping by making many of their Spanish print forms available online through PAR iConnect. Learn more at parinc.com backslash Spanish dash language dash products. Many of y’all know that I have been using TherapyNotes as our practice EHR for over 10 years now.
I’ve looked at others and I just keep coming back to therapy notes because they do it all. If you’re interested in an EHR for your practice, you can get two free months of therapy notes by going to thetestingpsychologist.com slash therapy notes and enter the code testing. What is going on? It’s the testing psychologist back with you for a clinical ish episode. We’re not actually talking about clinical material, but I’m talking about Q-interactive versus Q-global.
This is one of those questions that comes up so frequently and I forget that it is an actual thing that people are wrestling with because admittedly I’ve been using both of these products for a long time along with Qlocal. I don’t know how many of y’all remember that or still have it installed on your computer. yeah, I’ve been using the suite of Q products for a long time and it’s just so ingrained in my mind how they’re.
different and similar and the relationship between the two. But I forget that this is a legitimate question and looking objectively from the outside, pretty confusing from a branding perspective what each of them does and how they relate to one another and so forth. So, short, sweet episode today on Q Interactive versus Q Global with an honorable mention and shout out to Q Local and how these fit together.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (02:02.786)
how they’re similar, how they’re different, do you need both, et cetera. So without further ado, let’s talk about new products.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (02:25.23)
back and talking about Q products. So in researching this episode, at first I actually just put together a pretty simple episode to be honest and was going to talk about Q interactive versus Q global. But then I got really curious about where this whole Q product line even came from. And I did a little research and there’s actually not a lot out there to clarify. So.
As far as I can tell, there’s no publicly available documentation from Pearson that spells out exactly what the Q stands for. So some people say it stands for like quick or questionnaire, but I don’t know. There’s nothing that actually defines that. But what we do know is that Pearson started in kind of the late 2000, early 2010s when
these digital assessment platforms started to emerge, they started to use this Q product as shorthand for their digital assets. So it came to represent digital or automated scoring and administration products. Now, I mentioned in the intro that Q Local was actually the first one. So Q Local, those of you that remember, it came in that blue cardboard box. You open it up, there’s a
USB key and it was software that was installed locally on your computer to score tests. So you would install it, use it to score tests. After that, Q-global came around and Q-global is an online scoring platform for different measures. And then came Q-interactive. So, you know, this is I think what a lot of us are familiar with and involves the
know, two-way iPad-based administration. So, you know, from a branding perspective, think there is brand consistency here in the sense that the Q product all represent digital assets or digital scoring or administration. And it’s, you know, I like it. Q this or Q that, mean, it’s sort of, it’s catchy, it’s compelling. Many other…
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (04:44.926)
publishers have their like e-platforms or online platforms or i-enact, that kind of thing. But long story short, there’s no clear origin story for where these Q products came from, which is all right. But as far as the actual material here and what these things do, so let’s just do basics.
So as I said, Q-interactive and Q-global, these are both platforms that you can use to administer and score the measures that we typically give as part of our valuations. So, they are different though, all right? So, I just want to acknowledge right off the bat that yes, while the branding is nice to have some clarity and consistency in Q products, I think that it has also led to some confusion.
And that’s just based on interacting with consultant clients and reading the Facebook group posts and so forth. It is actually pretty confusing to distinguish Q-interactive from Zucalo. Okay, so the shorthand for me is that Q-interactive addresses the cognitive assessment or performance-based testing and it happens on tablets, right? So Q-interactive uses tablets. The tablets are integral to the administration. You have to have the tablets.
to use Q-interactive and it’s primarily used for cognitive measures like IQ tests, academic tests, the NEPSE, the WIMS, things like that. So primarily cognitive or performance-based. So global on the other hand is I would say it is an online administration platform but it primarily assists with administration of behavioral, emotional and personality measures. Okay.
and this is where it gets confusing, you can score cognitive measures on Q-global, but you cannot administer cognitive measures on Q-global. So I know there are some use cases out there where you might want to utilize Q-global for cognitive measures, like if you administer the WISC or the WACE on paper, and then you want an electronic scoring mechanism that will produce a score report with
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:09.976)
you know, the interpretive report from a hand or from a paper administered test. But on the whole, I don’t know a lot of folks who are doing that. It seems like if folks are administering on paper, they’re also just hand scoring and transferring those scores into a score table on their own and doing their own interpretation of the scores versus entering them into Q-global or the computer score. So that is the, I mean, that’s the
biggest difference between the two. Q-interactive, again, is used for primarily cognitive measures. uses the iPads. There’s some interaction with the client. And Q-global is typically you set up the rating scale or the personality measure and you send that to the client. They can complete it on their own or in the room with you, but there’s not much interaction there. And Q-global, again, does not facilitate the administration of cognitive measures.
So what are some pros and cons? Q-interactive, it allows for real-time scoring, portability and assessing and administering cognitive measures. It is paperless for the most part. You can be flexible with your subtest order. Downsides, cost structure. People do complain about the subtest pricing where you do have to pay per subtest in addition to an annual licensing fee that gives you access to the whole Q-interactive system.
It does require two iPads to utilize, so you have to buy the iPads. And, you know, it is limited to measures that are administered or owned by Serifin. So Global, on the other hand, has a pretty broad availability of reading scales. Remote use is really easy. You can send people the link to complete the questionnaires that you have or that you want to distribute.
There’s no hardware needed. It just runs on the web. So you also don’t have to install it to your computer. It’s not locked to any computer. The downsides, it’s less interactive, but I don’t know that we need a ton of interaction when we’re administering behavioral checklists. And there are delays in feedback. You know, there’s no immediate scoring. You have to, you know, quote, unquote, run a score report and make that happen. You could do it in the moment, but there’s going to be a little bit of a delay.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:39.602)
As far as the integration and private practice, I’ll tell you exactly what we do. But the disclaimer, I suppose, from the top here is that there really is no interaction between Q-interactive and Q-global. Okay? So the two systems do not talk to one another. They do not share clients. You have to put clients into both systems. The data does not go back and forth between the two systems. And this to me is, I think, where
it gets really confusing for folks because, know, Q products, they’re all under the same umbrella. They’re all Pearson. It seems like they should interact with one another, but they don’t. And that’s the thing that trips people up. So you do have to sign up for both if you want to utilize both. If you sign up for Q interactive, it’s not going to automatically give you access to Q global or vice versa. Let’s take a break to hear from a featured partner.
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And maybe the most important thing for me is that they have live telephone support seven days a week. So you can actually talk to a real person in a timely manner. If you’re trying to switch from another EHR, the transition is incredibly easy. They’ll import your demographic data free of charge. So you can get going right away. So if you’re curious or you want to switch or you need a new EHR, try therapy notes for two months, absolutely free. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com
therapy notes and enter the code testing. Again, totally free, no strings attached. Check it out and see why everyone is switching to therapy notes. As psychologists, we know that the more people we can reach, the more we can help. To do this, we need assessment tools that allow us to assist a more diverse population. PAR is helping by making some of their most popular Spanish language tests available online through PAR iConnect.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (12:04.93)
giving you more flexibility in serving your clients. Learn more at parinc.com backslash Spanish dash language dash products. All right, let’s get back to the podcast. So the workflow that we have in our practice and I think a lot of folks have is, you know, we have accounts with both. Those are not the same accounts even they’re not the same login or anything like that. So you sign up for both.
We use Q-interactive, again, primarily to administer cognitive measures like the WISC, WAIS, DCAFS, WIMS, EPSI, and so forth, KTEA, WIAT, all the cognitive or performance-based measures. And then we use Q-global to distribute questionnaire. So primarily the BASC, we do some personality measures like the MMPI and the MCMI or the MACI. And so we used Q-global to…
send out those questionnaires and score those questionnaires in the system. Now, as far as integration of the two, again, they do not integrate. So you download the score reports from both separately and save those to whatever file system you are using. We use Google Workspace. Just as a side note, I know I’m focused on the Q products and Pearson products here, but we also maintain separate accounts for PAR.
and WPS and MHS. It is a pain in the ass. It’s being direct to have to log into all these different systems and get data and administer questionnaires through all these different platforms. But that’s what we’re working with right now. Getting back to Q-interactive and Q-global. Like I said, they don’t talk to one another. They don’t integrate with one another. Pricing wise, I talked about Q-interactive a little bit and how they have an annual licensing fee of about
think $300 to access all of the tests and then you pay per subtest that you administer. So Q-interactive I think is great for folks who are just starting out. It’s good for low volume and it’s going to be way more cost effective than buying all the test kits, which can easily total $6,000, $8,000, $12,000 if you buy all those paper kits. So you can do kind of a pay as you go model and it’s great for low volume practices.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (14:27.766)
If you get into higher volume, Q-interactive does become more effective. What else? Q-global from a pricing model, yeah, you are still paying per administration, but you can choose, you can choose. It’s the same kind of pay as you go version where you can, yeah, you can choose which tests you want to administer. Most of them will make you buy increments of five.
you have to spend a little bit of money. But to me, five is really not too bad. And you can even test out some measures that might be new to you and without a huge investment. So as far as the functionality, I like both. mean, there are complaints about Q-interactive, you know, and the system being buggy and the app and the iPads connecting to one another and so forth. But on the whole, we’ve been using Q-interactive for, I mean, over 10 years now.
however long ago it came out. I was a very early adopter. It has done well as our practice has grown. We did have to overcome the issue of separate accounts and iPads, you know, talking to one another and like stealing the connection from one another as we were doing pretty high volume testing with lots of pairs of iPads. But that was overcome with separate logins for every set of devices that were in use on a given day.
Q-global, I think it works well. They updated some of the user interface maybe a year ago. That helped a lot. It’s still not fully updated, which is interesting to me. I had a conversation with some of the Pearson reps or professionals in charge of Q-global probably four or five years ago. And yeah, it…
I thought they were going to update the entire user interface of QGlobal and it just hasn’t happened. So it looks pretty antiquated on the front end. Yeah, but the functionality is there. We use it and have had lot success with it. So I think you kind of need both, honestly, for just efficiency and possibly financial reasons as well.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:54.092)
But yeah, just to wrap up, if you are primarily just looking for cognitive measures and you’re willing to do paper and pencil checklist administration, then you only need Q-interactive. But if you are administering paper and pencil cognitive measures and want to do electronic scoring for the behavioral checklist, then Q-global is your option. And if you want to go digital for everything, then you do need…
And of course, they’re both HIPAA compliant and the data is secure and everything like that. So nothing really to say there. All right, folks, hopefully this clarified things a little bit related to Q-interactive and Q-global. Again, I think they both have their place in a practice and especially moving forward, I was talking with a practice owner today actually about the possibility that paper and pencil might be phased out at some point or at least obsolete or hard to find.
I think this digital administration is here to stay. It’s just a matter of picking the platform that works best for you and doing the ROI on whether it’s worth it, quote unquote, to pay for these products to save a little bit of time. So I’ll leave you with that. And as always, happy testing. All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life.
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Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:33.816)
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