That's like saying that because hospitals have radiation techs, they should save money by building their own MRIs. I was trying very carefully not to say that

That's like saying that because hospitals have radiation techs, they should save money by building their own MRIs. I was trying very carefully not to say that there's no value in these surveys, because they are designed by experts: PhDs, running statistically significant experiments. Sample sizes on the ones I've looked at are in the hundreds, which is pretty huge for a psych experiment. Just slapping one together based on a few classes you took would be irresponsible and probably not very useful as a diagnostic. My complaint is mostly that since we're publicly funding these experiments anyways (one government body buys them from a company, who gives some money to another government body), we should cut out the middle-man.