GRPY205 GSP21 Advanced Psychological Assessment (2nd Sem 2022-2023)

Observation and Experiences as to the

Use and Practice of Psychological Assessment

Eduvejes D. Dello

MA in Clinical Psychology
 Professional Experience

1. Principle II: Competent Caring for the Well-Being of Persons and Peoples

I had a colleague who failed to perceive that her own values negatively affected one of

our residential clients. I don’t question her spiritual beliefs, but the client relay to one of the

Social Workers what happened during one of their interview sessions. During the interview, the

client shared his unresolve feeling towards his father’s disappearance (unknown if he’s still alive

or dead already) when he was young. He further shared that growing up he was seeking a father

figure that would guide him, but since no one’s there for him, the client linked that experience to

his substance use. The female colleague responded to the client using her religious belief, saying

“Siya (pertaining to God) na ang kilalanin mong tatay mo, mag dasal ka…”. Maybe it wasn’t

her intention to do harm and would like to use a spiritual approach for that situation, but instead

of helping, the client had more questions like, “kulang ba ako sa dasal kaya nangyari ‘yon?”,

and felt invalidated. This highlights how important it is to have an adequate knowledge of how

our values, experiences, culture, and social context as helping professionals might influence our

clients’ actions and interpretations.

2. Ethical Standards and Procedures in Specific Functions: VII. Assessment

Proper administration of psychological test

There was a time wherein we are only three psychometricians in the facility that I am

working at, and at that time there were more than 60 residents, which means that per

psychometrician, we had to handle 20 cases each. We encountered challenges when it comes to

meeting deadlines for the completion of the psychological assessment and submission of the

Second Assessment
psychological report, since we are not solely responsible for the assessment, but we are also Case

Managers with other tasks. Some of our colleagues were insisting that we should conduct mass

administration of test so that we could beat the deadline, but we cannot do that. We are using

some test that are strictly to be conducted on a one-on-one approach only, for example, the

Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. Looking back at this scenario, it is really important to be

familiar, adept, and to conduct correctly a test since this may affect the test results, which will

definitely also affect the evaluation and diagnosis. So, despite the pressure from the people

around us, we still administer the test based on how it was designed to be conducted.

Second Assessment