Mentor Research Institute

Healthy Contracts Legislation; Audit-Proof Ethical Charting; Qualified Supervision Training; Measurement-Based Care Research; Value-Based Payment Contracting

503 227-2027

Copyleft and Free Use License Agreement for Questionnaire Builder (QBuilder) Library

A CopyLeft and Free Use License Agreement has been created for use by Mentor Research Institute (MRI) and the American Mental Health Alliance (MRI). The purpose is to support the use of a questionnaire research initiative that will allow clinical practitioners on an individual and group basis to create questionnaires and simultaneously through MRI and AMHA support both clinical practice, study and research that is for the betterment of their patients and society.


The United States is facing an unprecedented number of mental health problems that are new, severe and life-threatening. Also, many mental health questionnaires which are designed to screen patients are outdated, are not valid for emerging pandemic problems, and are not available in an affordable efficient electronic form. Patient reported outcome measures, recognized in medical practice, are not available to private practice psychotherapists in ways that are not overly time consuming and disruptive to treatment. This is not just a technological problem, but more importantly an inability to design, create, administer, score, interpret, aggregate results, analyze and report in ways that support data informed clinical decisions and population health policy.

New screening and questionnaires are necessary that can help and not undermine private practice psychotherapy practice. Questionnaires created by academic institutions and for-profit businesses have not been adopted in private practice psychotherapy largely because of high cost, low value and some cases the relationship between the patient therapist. For example, a progress measurement system, paid for by a health plan is mandatory among therapist employees but is not being used by contracted private practice psychotherapists. The reason being that the software provides administrative access to the entire database allowing intrusive oversight by the healthplan. If the current measures were reliable, valid, useful and private, psychotherapists might be using them.

This initiative is an investigation of the extent to which psychotherapist are willing to create and work toward using reliable, valid and useful questions that support clinical practice and better outcomes. It is believed that freedom to create, use and analyze the results of questionnaire is severely limited by existing copyrights that restrict the both the use and modification of questionnaires to better the needs of patients and therapists. For example, changing outdated phrases, sentence structure, word choice and adding a question is forbidden, except for a fair-use. Without fair-use, psychotherapists are compelled to use questionnaires that are outdated, undermine treatment, offensive to some populations and can aversive to many patients. MRI has adopted a copyleft initiative to create, study and use questions, tests and questionnaire in clinical and research purposes as a non-profit program in collaboration with AMHA and PPC.

MRI ADOPTED COPYLEFT: A Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License

Section 1 – Definitions.

  1. Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.

  2. Adapter's License means the license You apply to Your Copyright and Similar Rights in Your contributions to Adapted Material in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Public License.

  3. Copyright and Similar Rights means copyright and/or similar rights closely related to copyright including, without limitation, performance, broadcast, sound recording, and Sui Generis Database Rights, without regard to how the rights are labeled or categorized. For purposes of this Public License, the rights specified in Section 2(2)(1)-(2) are not Copyright and Similar Rights.

  4. Effective Technological Measures means those measures that, in the absence of proper authority, may not be circumvented under laws fulfilling obligations under Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty adopted on December 20, 1996, and/or similar international agreements.

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  1. License grant.

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      1. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and

      2. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material.

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    3. Term. The term of this Public License is specified in Section 6(1).

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      2. indicate if You modified the Licensed Material and retain an indication of any previous modifications; and

      3. indicate the Licensed Material is licensed under this Public License, and include the text of, or the URI or hyperlink to, this Public License.

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Section 4 – Sui Generis Database Rights.

Where the Licensed Rights include Sui Generis Database Rights that apply to Your use of the Licensed Material:

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  3. You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(1) if You Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database.

For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 4 supplements and does not replace Your obligations under this Public License where the Licensed Rights include other Copyright and Similar Rights.

Section 5 – Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.

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Section 6 – Term and Termination.

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  2. Where Your right to use the Licensed Material has terminated under Section 6(1), it reinstates:

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Section 8 – Interpretation.

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Key words: Supervisor education, Ethics, COVID Office Air Treatment, Mental Health, Psychotherapy, Counseling, Patient Reported Outcome Measures,