Metasocial Psychometrics: a transdisciplinary framework toward conceptualising, measuring, and assessing community systems and human behaviour for researchers and practitioners

Ineffective conceptualisation, measurement, and analytical mechanisms are posited to be responsible for the ‘replication crisis’ in psychology and the broader social sciences (Chernov, 2025). The inefficiencies are evident with peacebuilding and humanitarian aid efforts (Horwood, 2025; Riemer & Schmitz, 2021). This article proposes a transdisciplinary framework to overcome such challenges. This framework was informed via a cross-functional research synthesis, including 77 practice-partner identified texts representing international frameworks, indices, and organisational repositories associated with human need, manmade and natural systems, and humanitarian and peacebuilding tenets that inform global policy and intervention. The academic literature review identified current barriers that prevent effective conceptualisation, measurement, and analysis with wellbeing and peacebuilding, and was coded to develop a Universal Object Needs Framework (UONF). The tenets/areas of inquiry within the 77 texts were then coded against the UONF to confirm they were all effectively represented.