Chapter 5 –
Assessment
Overview
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Assessment is the basis of the
classification system
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The classification of phenomena into
categories (e.g. anxiety disorders) is a
central feature of all science
Assessment is a process by which we collect
the information that enables us to classify
into such categories
There are many examples of the processes
of assessment and classification, e.g. In the
school system, in the workplace, in clinical
settings
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Psychological Assessment
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An iterative process
Systematic
Information about the person’s physical,
social, and cultural environments
Refining the question at hand before
responding to a question or a goal of
the assessment
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Psychological Assessment
Overview
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We all constantly engage in assessment
everyday
Often it is an automatic activity that enables
us to make small or big decisions
Data such as facial expression, tone of
voice, previous experience, or our own
emotional state affect our assessment
Psychological assessment is an iterative
process, that is, repetitive and changeable
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Goals of Psychological Assessment
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Determining whether a child is eligible for
special services
Identifying relevant behaviors that can be
the basis for an intervention plan
Determining the extent to which a given
behavior fits into the categorization of a
mental disorder
Determining if a person who committed a
crime is legally insane
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Psychological Assessment
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Generating and refining hypotheses
Importance of being informed about
human diversity
– Age
– Gender
– Sexual orientation
– Culture
– Religious beliefs
– etc
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Competencies in
Psychological Assessment
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Knowledge of:
– psychometric theory
– the scientific, theoretical, empirical, and
contextual bases of assessment
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Knowledge, skills, and techniques to
assess: cognitive, affective, behavioral,
and personality
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Competencies in
Psychological Assessment
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Ability to:
– assess intervention outcomes
– evaluate multiple roles that clients and
psychologists function
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Understanding of the relation between
assessment and intervention and intervention
planning
Technical assessment skills, including
problem/goal identification and case
conceptualization
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Assessment focused vs.
Intervention focused
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Assessment-focused services:
Information provided that addresses a
person’s current or anticipated
psychosocial deficits
– E.g., child custody evaluations
– Learning disabilities to identify strengths
and weaknesses
– Neuropsychological assessment to
evaluate impairment after an accident
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Cont-d
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Assessment –focused services aim at
providing information that can be used
to address a person’s current or
anticipated psychological deficits.
Referral factors- that is- who initiated
the assessment- are very important as
they may influence the extent to which
a person may want to cooperate with
the assessment,
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Intervention-focused services:
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The first step in gathering information
about appropriate treatment
– E.g., Intake evaluation at a clinic
– Whether a psychological intervention is
warranted at all
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Additional Assessment Types
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Screening: A tool often developed to
identify a disorder, condition or characteristic
in a group of people, depending on the site
– E.g., A measure that identifies mental
health problems in adolescents
– National screening days e.g. alcohol,
depression
Diagnosis/Case Formulation: The
development of an understanding of the
basis/etiology of the problem that informs
treatment
– E.g., early stages of therapy
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Diagnosis/Case Formulation
Assessment data are used to compare the
assessment findings with the DSM-5 criteria for
diagnosis to determine eligibility for the diagnosis.
 Diagnosis is important for:
_ Communication among professionals
_ Identifying treatment options
_ Asses etiology and prognosis
 The term Case Formulation is currently used to
describe the comprehensive conceptualization of
the person’s psychological functioning.
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Additional Assessment Types
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Prognosis/Prediction: An assessment
used to see whether a problem will
worsen without treatment
– E.g., Whether one needs therapy for a
given problem
– Prediction errors – unfortunately
common in clinical psychology
– Base rate – frequency of a problem in the
general population; The more cases, the
better is the ability to predict
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Additional Assessment Types
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Prognosis/Prediction (cont):
–Sensitivity – the number of times an event
is predicted across cases compared to the total
number of times the event actually occurs
–That is: the proportion of “true positives”
–Sensitivity of the assessment is determined
by dividing the number of true positives (e.g.
the number of children that were assessed as
ADHD and later found to shown ADHD
behaviors) by the combined number of all
children assessed, true positive (see above0
and false negative (they were assessed as
NOT ADHD whereas later found to be ADHD.
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Cont-d
–Specificity – the number of times a nonevent is predicted across cases compared
to the actual number of non-events
Prediction
Event
Event
(B)
Non-Event
(D)
True Event
True Non-
True Positives (A)
False Positives
False Negatives (C)
True Negatives
Sensitivity: A / (A + C)
Specificity: D / (D + B)
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Treatment Planning
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In treatment planning information about the
client's context is used in combination with
the scientific literature on psychotherapy to
decide about a course of action that would
benefit the client
The plan establishes a standard against
which treatment progress can be measured
A formal treatment plan is the basis for the
client’s informed consent for the procedures
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Treatment Planning (cont-d)
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The first step is to determine whether
there are treatment options with
established effectiveness for the types
of problems the client presents
Also the extent to which the
characteristics of the client match
those of the research participants in
the relevant clinical trials
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A Treatment Plan
It must cover 3 general areas:
1. Problem identification
2. Treatment goals
3. Treatment strategies and tactics
 Goals can be long term and also
immediate, short-term (such as
stopping a self-injurious behavior)
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Treatment Monitoring
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This is a crucial element in assessing
the success of the intervention
It provides an opportunity to modify
the treatment plan if needed
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Psychological Testing
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Psychological testing: A sample of a
person’s behavior scored in a
standardized process
– Not the same as psychological assessment
(which is often more multi-faceted and
may not use tests per se)
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Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Psychological Testing:
Important Concepts
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Standardization: Consistency across
clinicians in the procedure used to
administer and score a test
Reliability: A measure of the
consistency of the test
– Internal consistency: whether all
aspects of the test contribute meaningfully
– Test-retest reliability: whether similar
results would be obtained at 2 time points
– Inter-rater reliability: whether similar
results would be found by several raters
Psychological Testing:
Important Concepts
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Validity: whether a test measures
what it is supposed to measure
– Content validity: whether the test
measures all aspects of the construct
– Concurrent and predictive validity:
whether the test data are consistent with
other related constructs
– Discriminant validity: whether the test
is not measuring unrelated constructs
– Incremental validity: whether the
measure adds to other sources of data
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Psychological Testing:
Important Concepts
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Norms: using a large sample to
determine cut off scores on a test
– Representative sample: importance of
using a sample that matches the
population
– Percentile rank: percentage of those in
the normative group that fell below a given
test score
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Evidence-based assessment: using
theory and research to guide the
process of assessment
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Psychological Testing:
Important Concepts
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Online testing: not the same as a
psychological assessment
– Research using standard tools:
appears to be similar to traditional in
person assessment
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Growing research work on internet
assessment prior to individual meetings
– Smith et al. (2011) -example of clinic use
of instruments prior to initial visit
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rights reserved.