What Do We Measure?

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What Do We Measure?

• Intelligence
• Achievement
• Personality
• Symptoms
• Memory
• Vocational match
• Perception

• Social skills
• Stress
• Coping
• Etc, etc etc.
• Can psychologists measure everything?

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Why Is Assessment Important?

• It can drastically change someones life
• Diagnosis of a learning disability
• Admittance to a hospital
• Diagnosis of a disorder w/ stigma
• Decline offer of employment
• Custody of children

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Creating Confident Conclusions

• Convergence between sources
• Reliability
• Inter-rater
• Test-retest
• Internal consistency

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Creating Confident Conclusions

• Validity - assessing what we intend to assess
• Concurrent - other current measures
• Predictive - future events
• Content - covers all content
• Face validity - appearance

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• What are some ways to gather information?

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How Do We Gather Info?

• Interviews
• Self-report tests
• IQ tests
• Neuropsych tests

• Projective tests
• Behavioral Assessment
• Biological tests

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Interviews

• Structured
• Semi-structured
• Unstructured

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Structured Interviews

• PRO
• Precise
• Consistent
• Decrease defensiveness or judging
• Accurate
• Exhaustive

• CON
• Length/time
• Irrelevance

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Unstructured Interviews

• PRO
• Use own words
• Adaptive
• Good for undiagnosable issues

• CON
• Unreliable
• Subjective
• Not for research
• Clinician info-seeking bias

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Self-report Questionnaires

• Individuals read questions select most
  appropriate answer
• Why use?
• Quick easy
• Norms scoring
• Empirically supported
• Track change
• Client comfort
• Quick and easy for research

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Self-Report Questionnaires

• When are they bad?
• Language problems
• Reading problems
• Can be long (e.g. MMPI-2 567 items)
• Faking or Response Bias

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The Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale

• How satisfied are you with your marriage?
• How satisfied are you with your husband/wife as a
  spouse?
• How satisfied are you with your relationship with
  your husband/wife?
• Rated on a 7 point Likert scale from 1 (extremely
  dissatisfied) to 7 (extremely satisfied)

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Neuropsychological Assessment

• Used to measure brain (dys)function
• Often used for
• Testing after brain injuries
• Memory concerns
• Dementia and other cognitive declines

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Neuropsychological Tests

• Typically a battery
• measure different skills/elements
• E.g. memory, language, sensory-motor integration,
  perception, motor skills
• Conclusions based on patterns

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Behavioral Assessment

• Behavioral observations observing people in a
  natural environment
• Role-playing observing people in an imagined
  situation
• Why use behavioral assessment?

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Why Use?

• Lie about their usual behavior
• Behavior may not apply to a therapy situation
• Natural environment
• Practice and observe rare behaviors

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Why Not Use?

• Social desirability/undesirability
• Time commitment
• E.g. school observations
• Role-played behavior may not carry-over outside
  therapy

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Projective Tests

• Individuals respond to vague stimuli
• inkblots
• Pictures of events
• Colors
• Pictures of hands
• Open-ended sentences
• Clients project their experiences/disorder/perso
  nality

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Rorschach Inkblot Test

• First released in 1921
• Comprehensive System (1970s)
• Results scored on 100 characteristics
• Parts vs. whole
• Reactions unusual vs. typical
• Use of white space vs. black space
• Does the tester see the reaction?

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General Inkblot Instructions

1. What do you see here?
2. Do you see anything else?
3. Will you please show me where you see that?

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Criticisms of Rorschach

• Poor test-retest reliability
• Questionable ability to detect pathology
• Many people score as abnormal
• Poor incremental validity
• Few norms for ethnic minorities

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I need to collect data on Depression levels from
500 undergraduate students enrolled in
Introductory Psychology
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I suspect Aaron might be having hallucinations,
but he hasnt disclosed them and he seems like
hes going to get very angry and defensive if I
bring the subject up
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Finding Appropriate Tests