Chapter 4 Flashcards
Psychological assessment:
procedure by which clinicians, using psychological tests, observations, and interviews, develop a summary of a client’s symptoms and problems
Clinical diagnosis:
process through which a clinician arrives at a general “summary classification” of the patient’s symptoms by following a clearly defined system such as DSM-5 or ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases)
Reliability:
A term describing the degree to which an assessment measure produces the same result each time it is used to evaluate the same thing
Test-retest reliability
is whether a test result gives us a similar value today as it did a few days earlier (should allow for change sensitivity though…)
Inter-rater reliability
would describe, for example, the degree to which different clinicians agree on a diagnosis
Validity:
The extent to which a measuring instrument actually measures what it is supposed to measure
Standardization:
The process by which a psychological test is administered, scored, and interpreted in a consistent (“standard”) manner. Many tests are standardized to allow the test user to compare a particular individual’s score to a normative sample
Presenting problem:
the major symptoms or behaviors the client is experiencing
•Important to assess social and cultural context in which the individual functions: environmental demands, supports, and/or special stressors
Assessment is an ongoing process
factors on assessment
The client must feel comfortable with the clinician
Limits of confidentiality (harm to self or others…)
Reason for referral can be important
Clinical Interviews
A clinical interview usually involves a face-to-face interaction in which clinician obtains information about client’s situation, behavior, and personality
Mental status exam
(also consider insight/judgement)
examine appearance+behavior, thought processes (i.e. rate, continuity, content of speech), mood and affect, intellectual functioning, sensorium
sensorium
awareness of surroundings in terms of person (self and clinician), time, and place, –oriented *3
The main purpose of direct observation
is to learn more about the person’s psychological functioning by attending to their appearance and behavior in various contexts
direct observation tools
Role-playing is a type of analogue situation; a more controlled behavioral setting for conducting observations
Self-monitoring is a client’s objective reporting of behavior, thoughts, and feelings as they occur in various natural settings (their reactivity matters though)
–Rating scales can help both to organize information and to encourage reliability and objectivity
STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
•Follow a predetermined format •Each question is structured in a manner so as to allow responses to be quantified or clearly determined
SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS•
Interviewer is required to ask questions in a specific order and in a specific way, but is free to ask follow-up questions to better determine if the interviewee actually has the symptom being assessed
UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEWS•
Subjective and do not follow a predetermined set of questions
rosenhan experiment
For the study, eight “pseudopatients” – Rosenhan himself and seven volunteers – presented themselves at institutions across the country with the same symptoms: they reported hearing voices that said, “thud, empty, hollow.” Beyond a few biographical adjustments for privacy reasons, the pseudopatients used their own life stories. All eight were admitted and diagnosed with serious mental disorders. The question became, once you’ve been labeled with a psychiatric condition, how do you prove yourself “sane”…Yet it may not have been all it seemed. A six-year investigation into the real story behind the study has revealed many troubling inconsistencies, suggesting that there were multiple levels of deception in this iconic experiment.
INTELLIGENCE TESTS
•Most commonly used adult intelligence test is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised (WAIS)•Includes both verbal and performance material –Average IQ= 100, sd=15
PROJECTIVE PERSONALITY TESTS
•Unstructured and rely on various ambiguous stimuli such as inkblots rather than on explicit questions–Rorschach Inkblot Test, Thematic Apperception Test, Sentence Completion Test
Point is to elicit analyses
Rorschach Inkblot Test,
:, uses 10 inkblot pictures, to which a subject responds to “what you see, what it makes you think of” and “what it means to you”–
Thematic Apperception Test
uses a series of simple pictures about which a subject is instructed to make up stories
Sentence Completion Test
designed for children, adolescents, and young adults; consists of the beginnings of sentences that clients are asked to complete
OBJECTIVE PERSONALITY TESTS –
•Structured; questionnaires, self-report inventories, or rating scales
