What is the most important goal of psychological assessment?
To help the client understand themselves in ways that ultimately make the problems in their life better.
What is nomothetic?
Group differences (the part of variance in a quality that is shared by people)
What is idiographic?
Individual differences (the part of variance that is unique to the individual)
What do traditional objective test refer to?
- Structured questions
- A limited set of answers (true/false or likert)
- The score will be the same no matter who scores it
What are nonobjective aspects of objective tests?
- Test taker willingness to be honest
- Test taker ability to be honest (lack of self knowledge, response styles)
- Imperfections in the test
What does projective test traditionally refer to?
- Ambiguous stimulus
- Test taler generates a response with minimal external guidance
- Test takers projects or puts forward elements of their habits
- Interpretation requires subjectivity
What part of the Rorschach is NOT reflective from a projective test?
Scoring because it involves stimulus classification, problem-solving, and limits subjectivity
What are the two types of modified projective test?
- Projective test
- Performance-based personality test
Projective test
Rely exclusively on projection
Performance-based personality test
Have substantial nomothetic aspects
What is the purpose of personality assessment?
- To describe current functioning
- To confirm, refute or modify impressions
- To identify therapeutic needs
- To aid in differential diagnosis
- To monitor treatment
- To manage risk
- As an effective short-term therapeutic intervention
What are the best defenses against inaccurate conclusions?
- Using valid and reliable measures
- Multi-Method assessment
- Collaborative/Therapeutic assessment
What are personality traits?
Relatively enduring ways in which one person varies from another
What are personality states?
Temprary
What are underlying assumptions in assessment?
- Traits and states do exist
- Traits and states can be quantified and measured
- Multi-Method
- Provide insight into important issues
- Various sources of error
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Test-related behavior predicts non-test-related behavior
- Present day behavior sampling predicts future behavior
- Can be conducted in a fair, unbiased manner
- Benefit individuals and society
What are the “Big 5”?
Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
What are the methods of personality assessment?
- Self Report
- Performance-based
- Behavioral
What are the types of self assessments?
True/False
Lickert scale
Force choice
Adjective Checklist
Q-sort technique
What are the types of performance based assessments?
Sentence completion
Inkblot
Picture stories
Drawings
What are the types of behavioral assessments?
Actual exercises
Behavioral observation
Role play
Physiological methods
What are the methods of self-report test constructions?
- Rational
- Factorial (factor analysis)
- Empirical
What potential errors does the APA process provide checks for?
- Staying true to data forces one to consider many possibilities to accommodate conflicting data
- Corrective strategies one can use
- Feedback from the client can be a powerful corrective mechanism
What are the problems with APA reporting?
- Decision rules do not generalize well to different settings
- Not a lot of rules for a lot of the decisions
What is a summary of clinical decision making?
- Clinical intuition is fallible
- Actuarial algorithms are better than clinical judgement
