For FOQUSAphasia, there will be one steering committee, an informal body of experts which oversees task force creation and progress. These individuals are typically also represented on the leadership team of specific initiatives, discussed below. The steering committee typically meets twice a year to discuss task force progress. These meetings are open to any non-steering committee members, as well.

 

FOQUSAphasia began with two task forces: one to evaluate standards for reporting (“best practices [BP]”) and one for improving the current state of data quality (“methodology and data quality [MDQ]”). In future, more task forces may be created. Within each task force are initiatives. From 2020-2022, the BP task force focused on creation of reporting standards whilst the MDQ task force focused on creation of a test-retest database and development of automatic discourse scoring procedures.

 

As of 2022, the procedure for joining a leadership team has changed. Anyone can be as active as they'd like in the leadership team, and the leadership team selects a group of leaders that run the meetings. Within each leadership team, there is a lot of autonomy, in that the team can choose to work on (1) writing a paper together, (2) collecting data together, (3) going for a grant together, and so on. The idea is that each leadership team is a collaborative space focused on improving research in an area of interest to its members.

 

All members-at-large are welcome and encouraged to attend (virtual) meetings of each leadership team.