First Half Flashcards
What are the three domains of problems in living that self-report assessment looks at?
Emotional
Interpersonal
Thought disorders
What is psychological assessment?
It is a process that uses both nomothetic and idiographic means to understand subjects and their behavior in context, and to share that understanding with clients and practitioners.
What is the goal of understanding clients through assessment?
The goal is to guide treatment planning, to inform decision-making about subjects, and to help the client understand themselves in ways that ultimately ameliorate the problems in their life.
What is nomothetic?
Part of variance in a quality that is shared by people
What is idiographic?
Part of variance that is unique to the individual
Traditionally, what are the characteristics of objective tests?
- structured stimulus (structured set of questions)
- a limited set of externally provided answers (e.g., T/F, Likert scale, close-ended questions)
- answers are scored according to pre-existing key (does not rely on scorer’s judgment to classify the responses)
What are the possible “non-objective aspects” of objective tests?
- test taker/rater’s willingness to be honest (e.g. malingering)
- test taker/rater’s ability to be honest (e.g. lack of self awareness, response style, halo effect, scapegoating effect)
- imperfections in the tests
Who is the most comment type of informant in self-report test (i.e. objective test), and who else can be the informant?
Most common: Self
Other types: parent, spouse, teacher
Traditionally, what are the characteristics of projective tests?
- ambiguous stimulus or activity (e.g. inkblot)
- test-taker generates a response with minimal external guidance
- in responding, the test-taker projects or puts forward elements of their habits, personality
- interpretation requires subjectivity
In what ways is Rorschach projective, and in what ways is Rorschach not purely projective?
Projective: ambiguous stimuli, infinite answers
Not projective: scoring involves stimulus classification and problem-solving styles, and subjectivity is strictly limited in scoring
What are the two types of projective tests, and how are they different?
- Projective test: rely exclusively on projection–what the client sees (e.g. House-Tree-Person, Roberts Picture Story)
- performance-based personality test: contains substantial nomothetic aspects (e.g. Rorschach, Adult Attachment Projective)
What are the attributes of a good test?
- clear instructions for administering, scoring, and interpreting
- efficient use (incremental validity)
- accurate (reliability and validity)
What are the purposes 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 (e.g. detection of suicidal ideation)
- Effective short-term therapeutic intervention
What are the best defenses against inaccurate conclusions?
- using valid and reliable measures (which helps to guard against bias/blindspots)
- using multiple methods of measuring
- collaborative/therapeutic assessment
What is personality?
“An individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits and states”
Compare traits and states
Traits: relatively enduring ways in which one person varies from another
States: temporary, situation-dependent nature that is not (yet) observed to be enduring/consistent
Who are the key persons and what are their statements in the debate over states, traits, and behavior?
Mischel: Traits are not very important determinants of behavior. Context of the behavior is most important.
Bandura: trait theorists neglect the functionality of a behavior in a particular situation (e.g., reinforcement)
Wachtel: traits are important. Differing experiences cause people to see similar situations differently. Traits can influence the kinds of situations we put ourselves in
What are the underlying assumptions in assessment?
- traits and states do exist
- traits and states can be quantified and measured
- various approaches to measuring aspects of the same thing (multi-method) are a vital part of the assessment process
- assessment can provide insight into important issues that are not efficiently available otherwise
- various sources of error are inevitable part of the assessment process
- tests and other measurement techniques all have strengths and weaknesses
- test-related behavior predicts non-test-related behaviors (day-to-day life)
- present day behavior sampling predicts future behavior
- testing and assessment can be conducted in a fair and unbiased manner
- testing and assessment benefit individuals and society
What are the dimensions of personality (NEO-PI)?
- Openness to Experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
What is a current preference in understanding personality?
Generally, “types” (which can get too nomothetic) are out of favor and the preference has shifted towards patterns of traits and states, which offers greater precision and accuracy
What are the three methods of personality assessment?
- Self Report
- Performance-based
- Behavioral
What does the self report method of personality assessment consist of?
Forced choice (e.g. multiple choice)
Likert scale
Adjective checklist
T/F
Q-sort technique
What does the performance-based method of personality assessment consist of?
Drawings
Inkblot
Picture stories
Sentence completion
What does the behavioral method of personality assessment consist of?
Behavioral observation
Actual exercises
Role play
Physiological methods
What are the three methods of self-report test construction?
- Rational
- Factorial
- Empirical
What is the rational construction of self-report test and what are the characteristics?
Items are written to capture the understanding of what a trait is
-tends to be face-valid (can easily tell what the test is measuring)
-susceptible to response biases (easily faked)
-may not be internally consistent or valid
-diagnostically oriented
What is the factorial construction of self-report test and what are the characteristics?
Items are selected on the basis of factor analysis (looking at which items are related together/clustered)
-highly internally consistent
-tend to be face-valid
-somewhat susceptible to response bias
-more inclusive and less predictable
What is the empirical construction of self-report test and what are the characteristics?
Items are selected on their ability to empirically distinguish one group from another
-often have low internal consistency
-often items are not face-valid (can be more nuanced)
-may be less susceptible to response biases (harder to fake)
What are the nature of some errors in clinical judgment?
- May only elicit information that confirms hypotheses and ignore questions/information that would disprove it
- May compare patient to prototype rather than systematically evaluating on specific criteria
- May be overconfident rather than appropriately tentative
- Hindsight bias (wrongly assume we could have predicted the result after being told the result)
- May not consider relative frequency of the event they are predicting (rare events are harder to predict than common ones)
The assessment process provides some checks on the potential errors
- 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
T/F: clinical judgment can sometimes be as good as statistical decision rules (algorithm), but it never exceeds them.
True