Assessment Flashcards
What are the validity scales of the MMPI?
1 L: lie scale 2 F: fake-bad scale
3 K: Defensiveness 4 F minus K
5 FB: Back F 6 TRIN 7 VRIN
Someone high on the L scale will demonstrate?
lacking honesty and frankness, attempting to appear virtuous, minimizing psych/behavioral difficulties, defensiveness of negative attributes, or lower education
Someone high on the F scale will demonstrate?
Feeling bad, Severely disturbed, Exaggerating maladjustment
What does a high K mean?
Defensiveness; Person attempting to present self in favorable light (more subtle than L scale)
What does the FB tell us?
FB compares how a person did on the F scale in the 2nd half of the test, tells us if person got tired and lost steam.
What is the TRIN
Examines how consistent/valid a participants responding is by comparing items that should be answered oppositely.
What is the VRIN?
Looks at inconsistency–suggests indiscriminate responding
What are the clinical scales?
- Hypochondriasis 2. Depression
- Hysteria 4. Psychopathic Personality Types
- Masculinity/Femininity 6. Paranoia
- Psychostinia 8. Schizophrenia
- Hypomania 0 Social Introversian
What are 3 pros of clinical judgment?
(1) There is some evidence that clinical judgment gets better with more education/experience; small effect for experience d = .12 (meta-analysis in TCP; Spengler et al., 2009)
(2) Much of what clinicians consider to be “actuarial judgment” is actually clinical judgment, e.g. integrating MMPI results with results of a clinical interview to predict future behavior/make a diagnosis.
(3) Nearly all clinicians use clinical data integration (98%) while fewer used actuarial methods (31%)
What are 3 cons of clinical judgment?
(a) fatigue, recent experience, seemingly minor changes in ordering info, heuristic errors, etc.
(b) Underuse of base rates, assessment of covariation, and confirmatory strategies (Faust, 1986)
(c) May improperly weight non-predictive elements (e.g., Halo effect[attractiveness], race, etc.
What are Fausts (1986) recommendations for using clinical judgment?
(1) testing for diagnostic signs (additional information may not always increase predictive validity, but could be a confound), use of disconfirmatory strategies (better to try to disconfirm hypotheses rather than support them—avoid confirmatory hypothesis testing), and recognition of predictive uncertainty (be conservative and admit uncertainty)may all help problems with clinical judgment (Faust, 1986)
What are 3 pros of actuarial judgment?
(1) Always lead to the same conclusion on the same set of data (not true with humans)
(2) Mathematically weights statistically predictive elements
(3) Even among experts, reliability and validity of clinical judgments is significantly lower than actuarial assessments (Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989; Grove et al., 2000)
(a) True since the first study was done (Burgess, 1928) to predict parole violators
What are cons of actuarial judgment?
Arguments from clinicians include (Vrieze & Grove, 2009):
(a) Cannot possible account for all factors that influence a prediction
(b) Ignores clinical intuition
(c) Ignores clinical experience
(d) Too costly
(e) Inefficient
(f) Too difficult to apply
What is 4 phase model of multicultural assessment?
(Ridley, Li, & Hill, 1998)
- identify cultural data
- interpret cultural data
- incorporate cultural data
- arrive and sound assessment decision
What are some ethical responsibilities of assessment?
(Sattler, 2001) competence, consultation, knowledge of laws, awareness of biases, avoidance of MRs, informed consent, confidentiality, methodology, records, understanding the power of recommendations, research
