Psychological assessment

(brief definition)

 What kind of info do we want?

(psychological assessment)

§  Reliable info (measures should be reliable)

§  Valid- measuring what you want to measure

§  Accurate- detecting what is there

§  Specificity- not detecting something that is not there

 Why assess?

§  To make referrals

§  To diagnose

§  To evaluate treatments/progress monitor

 In general a good assessment will gather info from _________sources, across __________occasions, using ________ methods

  Psychological assessment vs. psychological testing

 Assessment- integrating information for a better understanding of why a individual is seeking help

Testing- to compare to norms, diagnosis

§  Assumes that illness has an environmental cause or you have a genetic disposition (diathesis stress model)

§  Problem with that is not all diagnosis leads to a cure (ex- schizophrenia: treatment-drugs, autism- treatment?, depression: diagnosis does not inform you of what the treatment should or should not be)

§  Assessing individual with standardized methods and comparing to group norms (similar to nomethetic approach)

Generally nomethetic assessments are not very sensitive to change

true/false

  behavioral approach, more concerned with how the individual compares to themselves at different points in time

Can have nomethetic qualities- standardized

But you still don’t make comparisons to a normative group

 Generally used multiple times (throughout the day/week, constantly tracking to see progress/course)

 Not typically used for diagnosing

Ø  Asking why they are seeking help?

§  What is the client suffering from?

§  Does is actually require treatment?

§  Who should provide the treatment? (may have to refer)

-when was the onset of the problem?

-what is their percieved severity of the situation?

§  what the client sees as the problem

-good to rephrase what your understanding of the chief complaint is

-empathy

-display unconditional positive regard (you are not judging)

they will later feel embarassed and not return

-control the situation to not let that happen

directive

§  If they don’t want to talk you will need to be more directive anyways

§  If they want to talk about everything and you don’t have the time- need to be more directive

§  You determine what areas they need to go more deeply into

Ø  provides guidelines of where to direct conversation, helps to not miss important information

§  Protects against confirmatory bias (seeking only info that will confirm your hypothesis) and halo effects (1 piece of info skews how you view the person)

Ø  - no guidelines, making up own questions can cause you to miss important info, more susceptible to confirmatory bias and halo effect

SAD PERSONS

-sex, age, depression, previous attepmpt, ethanol (alcohol) abuse, rational thinking loss, social supports lacking, organized plan, no spouse, and sickness

SLAP

specificity (plan details)

lethality (how quickly enactment of the plan could produce death)

availability (how quickly a patent could implement plan)

proximity (proximity of helping resources)

-assessment method: standardized/individually selected for each client

-elements of assessment instrument: ind. selected for each client

-relevance and representativeness of instrument elements: all elements are relevant to client and more likely to capture important variables

-level of specificity of measured variable: can vary

-obtained measures: can be identical or can vary across clients

-selection of assessment instruments: based primarily on data from client

-basis for clinical judgments from obtained measures: based on criteria specific to the client

-data aggregation across clients: can aggregate across clients for diff. measures of the same construct if a standardized format it used

-generalizability of inferences: inferences from measures are not generalizable across persons

-applicability of psychometric principles: all forms of reliability and validity can be appicable but esp. content validity, criterion-related validity, and sensitivity to change

-assessment method: standardized across clients

-elements of assessment instrument: standardized across clients

-relevance and representativeness of instrument elements: may contain irrelevant elements and may not capture important variables for a client

-level of specificity of measured variable: can vary  

-obtained measures: identical across clients

-selection of assessment instruments: based primarioy on data from assessment of other persons

-basis for clinical judgments from obtained measures: based on comparison of the same measures obtained from other clients 

-data aggregation across clients: can aggregate data ffrom same instrument across clients

-generalizability of inferences: inferences from emasures are generalizable across persons

-applicability of psychometric principles: all forms of reliability and validity can be applicable

mood- refers to the dominant emotion expressed during the interview

affect- refers to the client's range of emotions

-highest reliabilities have been found for global assessment (presence/absence of psychopathology), much lower reliabilities have generally been found for the assessment of specific types of behaviors/syndromes

-high reliabilities have been found for overt behaviors, but reliability has been less satisfactory for more covert aspects of the person

SADS:

high interrater reliailities, good test-retest reliability, good validity

DIS (highly structured)

-relability and validity have both been variable and controversial