Psychological Assessment BPS308

A comprehensive guide to the role of psychological assessments. Learn to determine why and when to use psychological assessment, and develop an understanding of the different types of assessment available (eg. Behavioural Assessment, Wechsler Intelligence and Memory Scales, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, etc). Course Structure There are seven lessons in this module, as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Context of Clinical Assessment
3. The Assessment Interview
4. Behavioural Assessment
5. Wechsler Intelligence Scales
6. Wechsler Memory Scales
7. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Aims

• Explain the main kinds of psychological tests and why they are used, and meaning of test reliability and validity
• Explain ethical and other factors that constrain clinical assessment
• Describe a structured and an unstructured interview
• Explain behavioural assessment and how it can be conducted
• Discuss Wechsler scales in detail
• Explain the purpose and use of the Wechsler Memory Test
• Explain the purpose and usage of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

JUSTIFICATION FOR USING TESTS
Psychological tests were created for three main reasons, all of which are interconnected:

• It is easier to get information from tests than by clinical interview.
• The information from tests is more scientifically consistent than the information from a clinical interview.
• It is harder to get away with lying on a test than in a clinical interview.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Psychometric Assessments

Advantages – Psychometric tests provide information on the performance of certain groups of people perform. They tend to be standardised tests. The test score of an individual is then compared with the test scores of a group of people. For example, we could test a hundred people and find that the average IQ was 100. If the individual was then tested and their score was 94, we would say that they were below average compared to the average results.

In the tests, all the people completing the test have the same instructions and the same task to do. This makes sure that any differences in performance are due to the person completing the task, not the task itself. To explain this more fully, if an interviewer sat and asked ten people the same question, there may be different results.

For example, the interviewer may not like the first respondent, so might rush through the test, or might explain things more fully to another respondent, or help another respondent. Whereas if all the respondents have the same instructions and task, the differences should be due to them, not because of the way they were asked the questions. Detailed instructions are also given to the people who administer and score the tests, so there should be some standardisation.

The tests are useful, because in theory, they allow us to make statistically based, objective judgements, on things such as, aptitude for jobs.

However, there are some difficulties with psychometric tests –

Disadvantages- As already mentioned, if things such as intelligence and personality exist, we should be able to measure them. The difficulty is, whether these things do actually exist, and if they do, whether it is possible to measure them. After all, IQ was invented by psychologists, so psychologists are then investigating something they consider important.

The person designing the test decides what should be in the test, so the test only measures what the designer thinks is important. If there is no agreed-upon definition, eg. What would make a good teacher, and then different test designers may include different types of question.

Are personality traits stable? For example, we may perform really well in an IQ test one day, but perform poorly the next. Basically, psychological tests measure our performance in a certain task on a certain day.