When to Use Standardised Assessments—And When You Might Need to Build Your Own

Hello, I’m Alex Kaula, Senior R&D Scientist at Cambridge Cognition.

If your research involves measuring cognitive function or clinical outcomes, you’ve likely faced this question: Should I use an established, validated assessment, or create a new one myself?

During my doctoral research, I spent considerable time developing cognitive tasks—carefully adjusting stimulus timings, refining response parameters, and repeatedly troubleshooting until the tasks reliably measured exactly what I intended. Although rewarding, it was also slow, complex, and sometimes frustrating. At times, the tasks would run perfectly, but only on a particular machine, under specific conditions, and seemingly only if the wind was blowing in the right direction.

This experience gave me a deep appreciation for the benefits of using standardised assessments—whether cognitive tasks or patient-reported questionnaires. Well-established measures have typically been refined and validated through extensive research, allowing researchers to concentrate directly on their scientific questions rather than technical and methodological complexities.

When Building Your Own Assessment Makes Sense

Creating a bespoke assessment can be the right choice when your research explores entirely novel concepts or cognitive processes for which no validated methods currently exist. Similarly, if the focus of your research includes methodological innovation—developing and validating new tasks or questionnaires—then designing your own measure is clearly justified. Indeed, developing novel assessments can sometimes open entirely new avenues of scientific inquiry.

However, it’s important to recognise the significant hidden effort and associated costs involved. Developing an assessment from scratch involves programming, extensive pilot testing, troubleshooting, timing calibration, validation, and ongoing maintenance—tasks that often redirect valuable research resources, staff time, and funding away from core scientific questions.

When Using Validated, Standardised Assessments Is Preferable

For most research projects, the primary goal is obtaining robust, reliable, and interpretable data. In these situations, using established and validated assessments can offer several key advantages:

• Established validity and reliability: Many widely-used assessments—including those from Cambridge Cognition—have been validated through extensive research. Our cognitive assessments alone have been featured in over 3,000 peer-reviewed publications, underscoring their broad applicability and interpretability across varied research contexts.
• Cross-study comparability: Adopting a widely recognised, standardised measure allows your results to be easily interpreted within the context of existing research literature, facilitating direct comparisons and strengthening the contextual relevance of your findings.
• Efficiency and resource management: Established assessments come research-ready, removing much of the development burden. This allows your research team to focus more effectively on core scientific questions, potentially accelerating timelines and preserving research budgets. Although there may be upfront licensing costs, these are often more predictable and manageable compared to the unpredictable resources required by ongoing in-house development and validation.
• Scalability and remote capability: Validated assessments, such as Cambridge Cognition’s cognitive tasks and electronic Clinical Outcomes Assessments (eCOAs), often come pre-built for use on digital platforms such as iPads or personal devices (BYOD). This supports longitudinal studies, high-frequency testing, and remote research designs without additional development costs.

These advantages illustrate a broader principle: cognitive assessments that have become established and widely adopted in research are popular precisely because they reliably measure targeted cognitive processes without requiring extensive, costly, and ongoing development by each individual researcher. By using well-validated measures, researchers gain immediate access to tasks that reflect careful and rigorous methodological development, robust data integrity, and broad scientific acceptance. This makes the initial investment in standardised assessments not simply a purchase of tasks, but an investment in scientifically credible methods, proven reliability, and research efficiency.

Choosing Clinical Outcome Assessments (eCOAs)

Clinical Outcomes Assessments (COAs)—questionnaire-based tools used to capture patient experiences—offer parallel considerations. When deciding between adopting validated questionnaires or developing a new measure, researchers typically weigh similar factors:

• Validation and regulatory acceptance: Standardised eCOAs are typically pre-validated and widely recognised by regulatory bodies, simplifying the research process from design to publication.
• Comparability across studies: Using validated eCOAs helps researchers contextualise their results within established literature, improving interpretability and potential impact.
• Hidden resource demands for custom questionnaires: Designing new eCOAs involves significant psychometric testing, piloting, linguistic adaptation, and ongoing reliability assessments—efforts which can significantly redirect resources from other research activities and dramatically escalate project costs.

Nevertheless, in some cases, no existing eCOA adequately captures the specific outcomes required by your research question, necessitating the creation of bespoke questionnaires despite the additional investment required.

The Hidden Costs and True Value of Assessments

Researchers often underestimate the true cost of developing their own assessments. Beyond initial programming, a bespoke measure involves extensive and ongoing validation, maintenance, software updates, compatibility testing, regulatory documentation, and dedicated staff time. While building your own task might initially appear to be more economical, the real long-term costs—in terms of funding, time, and researcher resources—are often substantially greater than anticipated.

In contrast, validated assessments such as those offered by Cambridge Cognition provide predictable costs, alongside well-established reliability across a wide range of therapeutic areas, comprehensive support, and ongoing updates and improvements. The upfront costs associated with validated assessments reflect substantial past investments in rigorous development, validation, and optimisation, ensuring that researchers receive tools that are robust, scientifically credible, and immediately usable.

The Added Benefit of Cross-Study Comparability

A core advantage of using standardised assessments—whether cognitive tests or eCOAs—is the ease with which your findings can be situated within existing scientific literature. Employing commonly-used assessments allows your results to be more easily compared to established benchmarks, enriching their interpretability and broader significance. Though using the same assessment does not guarantee perfect comparability due to variations in study design or population, it provides a solid foundation for meaningful interpretation and discussion.

Ultimately, the choice depends on your specific research objectives, your methodological requirements, and practical constraints. If your primary interest is in reliably measuring cognition or patient-reported outcomes, it’s worth considering whether existing validated assessments, such as those offered by Cambridge Cognition, might already fit your needs.

If you’d like to discuss whether established assessments could support your research goals—or if your project genuinely requires a novel approach—I’d be delighted to help. Having navigated both paths myself, I appreciate both the complexities and the potential rewards inherent in either choice.

Alex Kaula
Senior R&D Scientist, Cambridge Cognition