GB Software Blog

So, what’s going on? January 1, 2010

For the one or two people who have been paying attention, it probably seems that we’ve fallen off the edge of the earth. The GB Software website has not been updated in some time, and we’ve not had many publications or other visible signs of movement.

There are some reasons for this. Most notably, Dr. Louis Gottschalk, creator of the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis scales and one of the founders of GB Software, passed away in late 2008. Without his regular encouragement (nagging, whatever), inertia took over and it was easier to do nothing than to do something. At the same time, other obligations demanded attention, resulting in the stagnation of our efforts.

All was not lost, and there has been some activity. In particular, we have several efforts in various stages of completion that may lead to new capabilities and even new software products in the foreseeable future. Without making any promises or going into a lot of detail, some projects that are at varying states of maturity include:

• A new version of the Psychiatric Content Analysis and Diagnosis (PCAD) software. The currently released version is PCAD 2000, which is available through our website. The new version, PCAD 3, has been shipping in beta for over a year. (Users who ordered PCAD 2000 during that time have also received PCAD 3.) We’re nearing the point of releasing PCAD 3, and I hope to describe some of the new features here in the run up to that release.
• A new Narcissism scale. One of the last technical contributions that Dr. Gottschalk made was to support the addition of a Narcissistic Content Analysis Scale (NCAS) to the PCAD 3 base.  It provides an objective measure of the relative magnitude of narcissism. The characteristic captured in the Narcissistic Scale appears to be the degree to which a person feels entitlement versus a sense of responsibility for his or her accomplishments and failures. While there are no norms available, the basic scoring function for this scale will be part of the PCAD 3 release.
• Website updates. In particular, we’re going to find a way for users to buy PCAD licenses directly through the website, rather than having to physically send payment and wait to receive a CD-ROM containing the software. We’ve been doing electronic deliveries (downloads) for a while where possible, and we’d really like to make the process as simple as we can.
• Support for German and Dutch. Working with Uwe Hentschel of Universiteit Leiden, we’ve been working to be able to score text in German and Dutch. An initial implementation (based on the PCAD 3 code) is complete, though there’s a lot to be done yet. We have not, for example, tried to change the interface language from English, though this would be an obvious step.
• Web enablement. On an experimental basis, we’ve adapted the PCAD scoring software to work as a module within a website. The website owner/administrator can use PCAD to score entries provided by site users – for example, to generate analyses of journal entries. This could also provide a web-based PCAD, though there are numerous issues that will have to be addressed.

That’s not everything, but it does hit the highlights. Let us know in the comments if any of these are of interest, or what in what other directions you would like us to take our technology.