What is clinical assessment?

Clinical assessment is the process of collecting information and drawing conclusions through
the use of observation, psychological tests, neurological tests, and interviews to determine what
the person’s problem is and what symptoms he/she is presenting with.
What Is assessment?
a. Assessment is the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion
a. Clinical assessment is used to determine how and why a person is behaving
abnormally and how the person may be helped.
b. The focus pf assessment is idiographic, that is, on an individual person
c. Assessments also may be used to evaluate the treatment progress
b. The specific tools used in an assessment depend on a clinician’s theoretical orientation
c. Hundreds of clinical assessment tools have been developed and fall into three
categories
a. Clinical interviews
b. Tests
c. Observations
Characteristics of assessment tools
1. Assessment needed to be reliable or consistent. – reliability
2. Make sure the test measures what it says it measures. – validity (it claims what it
measures)
a) Content Validity
b) Concurrent Validity
c) Divergent Validity
d) Face Validity
e) Construct Validity
f) Criterion Validity
3. Should be accomplished with the use of clearly laid out rules, norms, and/or procedures.
– standardization
Referral

 A referral may be made either because of the way the client’s problems are interfering
with his or her functioning
 Clinicians thus begin with the referral question. It is important that they take pains to
understand precisely what the question is or what the referral source is seeking
 The assessment process begins with a referral. Someone – a patient, a teacher, a
psychiatrist, a judge and others.
 It is important to recognize that clinical psychologist cannot simply use intuition and
subjective judgment to identify the complex factors that lead to a referral or to a request
for help.

METHODS IN CLINICAL ASSESSMENT

Clinical observation
A. Clinical observations are systematic observations of behavior
B. different kinds
1. Naturalistic and analog
a) Naturalistic observations occur in everyday environments, including
homes, school, institutions (hospitals and prisons), and community settings
b) Most focus on parent-child, sibling-child, or teacher-child interactions
c) Observations generally are made by “participant observers” and
reported to a clinician.
d) If naturalistic observation is impractical, analog observation are used and
occur in an artificial setting.
2. Self-monitoring
a) People observe themselves and carefully record the frequency of certain
behaviors, feelings, or cognitions as they occur over time
b) Limitations
1. Reactivity
2. Cross-sectional Validity
Clinical Interview
A. Interviews are face-to-face encounters and often are the first contact between a
client and a clinician/assessor
1. They are used to collect detailed information, especially personal history, about a
client
2. They are useful because they allow the interviewer to focus on whatever topics
he/she considers most important.
B. The focus of an interview depends on the interviewer’s theoretical orientation
1. Interviews can be either unstructured or structured
a. In an unstructured interview, clinicians ask open-ended questions
b. In a structured interview, clinicians ask prepared questions, often from a
published interview schedule
- These types of interviews also may include a mental status exam – a systematic
assessment of the client’s awareness, orientation to time and place, attention span,
memory, judgment and insight, thought content and process, mood, and
appearance.
C. What are the limitations of clinical interviews?
1. Interviews may lack validity or accuracy; individuals may be intentionally
misleading
2. Interviewers may be biased or may make mistakes in judgment
3. Interviews, particularly unstructured ones, may lack reliability
Clinical assessments
A. Clinical tests are devices for gathering information about specific topics from which
broader information can be inferred
B. There are more than 500 different tests in use, falling into
a. Six categories
i. Projective test
ii. Personality inventories
iii. Response inventories
 iv. Psychophysiological test
v. Neurological or neuropsychological test
vi. Intelligence test
1. Projective tests
a. These tests require that subjects interpret value and ambiguous stimuli or follow
open-ended instructions
b. They are used mainly by psychodynamic practitioners
c. The most popular are the Rorschach test, sentence completion, and drawings
d. Strengths & weakness of projective test?
i. They are helpful or providing “supplementary” information
ii. They rarely have demonstrated much reliability or validity
iii. They may be biased against minority ethnic groups

2. Personality inventories
a. Usually self-response, these tests are designed to measure broad personality
characteristics and focus on behaviors, beliefs, and feelings
b. The most widely used is the Minnesota multiphase personality inventory (MMPI)
c. Strengths & weakness of personality inventories
i. They are easier, cheaper, and faster to administer than projective test
ii. They are objectively scored and standardized
iii. They appear to have greater validity than projective tests
iv. Measured traits often cannot be directly examined – how can we really
know the assessment is correct
v. Tests fail to allow for cultural differences in responses.
3. Response inventories
a. Response inventories usually are self-response measures that focus on one specific
area of functioning:
i. Affective inventories: measure the severity of such emotions as anxiety,
depression, and anger
ii. Social skill inventories: ask respondent to indicate how they would respond in
a variety of social situations
iii. Cognitive inventories: reveal a person’s typical thoughts and assumptions
b. Strengths and weaknesses
i. Response inventories have strong face validity
ii. They rarely include questions to assess careless or inaccurate responding
iii. Few have been subjected to careful standardization, reliability and/or validity
procedures.

4. Psychophysiological tests
a. Psychophysiological tests measure physiological response as an indication of
psychological problems:
 1. This includes measurement of heart rate, blood pressure, body
temperature, galvanic skin response, and muscle contraction
b. The most popular psychophysiological test is the polygraph (lie director)
c. Strengths and weaknesses psychophysiological tests
i. these tests require expensive equipment that must be tuned and maintained
ii. they also can be inaccurate and unreliable
5. neurological and neuro psychological tests
a. neurological tests directly assess brain function by assessing brain structure and
activity
i. example: EEG, PET scans, CT scans, MRI
b. neuropsychological tests indirectly assess brain function by assessing cognitive,
perpetual, and motor functioning
i. the most widely neuropsychological test is Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test
c. Strengths and Weaknesses
i. These types of tests can be very accurate
ii. These tests are at best, only rough and general screening devices
iii. They are best when used in a battery of tests, each targeting a specific skill
area
6. Intelligence tests
a. Intelligence tests are designed to indirectly measure intellectual ability and are
typically comprised of a series of tests assessing both verbal and nonverbal skills
b. The most popular of the intelligence test are the Wechsler Scales (WAIS, WISC)
c. Strengths and Weaknesses
i. These are among the most carefully produced of all clinical tests
ii. They are highly standardized on large groups of subjects, and as such, have
very high reliability and validity
iii. Performance can be influenced by nonintelligence factors (e.g., motivation,
anxiety, test-taking experience)
iv. Tests may contain cultural biases in language or tasks
v. Members of minority groups may have less experience and be less
comfortable with these type of tests, influencing their results.