The Methodological Quality of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Psychology: A Pilot Study of the Guidelines Developed by the Ordre des Psychologues du Quebec

Despite the availability and proliferation of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and of methods to design such guidelines in recent years, a growing body of evidence suggests that the quality of CPGs can often be dubious, typically pointing to a lack of methodological rigor in guideline development. In the social sciences and in psychology, numerous CPGs have been developed, yet research has failed to investigate their quality and methodology. This pilot study evaluated the 5 available guidelines of the Order of Psychologists of Quebec (OPQ) using a scoring system proposed by Ansari and Rashidian (2012) for examining guideline development tasks. The method consisted of rating CPGs based on the absence, presence, or detailed consideration of 27 tasks involved in guideline development. Overall, results suggest that the CPGs did not implement important tasks for guideline development, and were far below the acceptable standards in guideline development procedures. A minimal number of the necessary tasks for guideline development were addressed in the CPGs. These findings suggest there are important problems with the development and quality of these CPGs. The pilot study also points to the need for conducting future research on the clinical guidelines used in psychology.