Chapter 3

Question 1

What is a clinical assessment?

Answer 1

used to determine whether, how, and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped

Question 2

What must make an assessment tool reliable?

Answer 2

consistency of test measures

Question 3

What makes an assessment attain a high interrater reliability?

Answer 3

degree of agreement among independent observers who rate, code, or assess the same thing

Question 4

What is validity in an assessment tool?

Answer 4

it accurately measures what it supposed to measure

Question 5

What is the difference between predictive and concurrent validity?

Answer 5

predictive: tool’s ability to predict future characteristics or behavior
concurrent: degree to which measures gathered from one tool agree with the measures gathered from other assessment techniques

Question 6

Explain a clinical interview.

Answer 6

face-to-face encounter between the clint and clinician

Question 7

What is the difference between a structured and unstructured interview?

Answer 7

unstructured: open-ended questions with a lack of structure for clinician to explore topics
structured: clinicians prepare and ask questions which can include a mental status exam

Question 8

What are clinical tests?

Answer 8

gathers information about a few aspects of a person’s psychological functioning from which broader information about the person can be inferred; 6 kinds

Question 9

Explain projective tests.

Answer 9

• clinical test
• clients interpret vague stimuli or follow open-ended instructions like “draw a picture”
• Rorschach test

Question 10

What is a personality inventory?

Answer 10

• individuals assess themselves by answering a range of questions about their behavior, beliefs, and feelings

Question 11

What is a response inventory?

Answer 11

people provide detailed info about themselves but these tests focus on one specific area of functioning ex: social skills

Question 12

What is a psychophysiological test?

Answer 12

measures physiological responses as possible indicators of psychological problems

Question 13

What are neuropsychological tests?

Answer 13

they measure cognitive, perceptual, and motor performances on certain tasks to interpret any underlying brain problems

Question 14

What do intelligence tests contain?

Answer 14

• series of tasks requiring people to use various verbal and nonverbal skills
• intelligence quotient: general score of intelligence tests

Question 15

Define a diagnosis.

Answer 15

it determines the person’s psychological problems that constitute a specific disorder

Question 16

What is a classification system?

Answer 16

a list of disorders with descriptions of the symptoms and guidelines for assigning individuals to the categories

Question 17

What does the DSM-5 require clinicians to provide?

Answer 17

both categorical and dimensional information

Question 18

What do critics say about the DSM-5?

Answer 18

• the framers may have failed to run a number of field studies to test the merit of the new criteria
• the manual’s validity is concerning; gender and racial bias

Question 19

What is idiographic information?

Answer 19

individual information about a client

Question 20

What is standardization?

Answer 20

• standardizing a technique involves setting up common steps to be followed whenever it is administered
• one must standardize admin., scoring, and interpretation

Question 21

What are the two main types of reliability?

Answer 21

• test-retest reliability
• interrater reliability

Question 22

What are the three specific types of validity?

Answer 22

face, concurrent, and predictive

Question 23

What are clinical interview limitations?

Answer 23

• lack of validity/reliability
• interviewer bias
• some researchers believe it should be discarded as a whole

Question 24

What are the limitations of a clinical test?

Answer 24

• reliability and validity not consistently shown
• may be biased against minority racial and ethnic groups

Question 24

What are the strengths of personality inventories?

Answer 24

• easier, cheaper, and faster to admin. than projective tests
• objectively scored and standardized
• greater validity than projective tests

Question 25

What is the most widely used personality inventory and what does it entail?

Answer 25

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
• scores range from 0 - 120 and above 70 is considered deviant

Question 25

What are the limitations of personality inventories?

Answer 25

• not considered highly valid
• measured traits can not be directly observed
• tests do not allow for cultural differences in responses

Question 26

What are limitations of response inventories?

Answer 26

• strong face validity
• not all been subjective to careful standardization, reliability, or validity procedures

Question 27

What are the strengths and limitations of psychophysiological tests?

Answer 27

• key role in assessment of certain psychological assessments
• require expensive equipment that must be turned and maintained
• can be inaccurate/unreliable

Question 28

What are the strengths of intelligence tests?

Answer 28

• among most carefully produced of all clinical tests
• highly standardized on large groups of subjects
• high reliability and validity

Question 29

What are the limitations of intelligence tests?

Answer 29

• do not account for low motivation or high anxiety
• cultural biases in language or tasks in test
• members in minority groups may have less experience with these types of tests

Question 30

What is a clinical picture?

Answer 30

info from interviews, tests, and observations to construct an integrated picture of the factors that are causing and maintaining a client’s disturbance