Abnorma Psychology: Clinical Assessment
Abnormal Psychology Chapter 3 Notes:
Clinical Assessment, Diagnoses and Treatment
Clinical practioners main focus when faced with new clients is to gather ideographic information (individuals information) about them and understand them and their difficulties.
Clinical Assessment
Assessment: the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion.
Goes on in every realm of life (picking cereal or clothes)
Clinical Assessment: used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped.
Also enables the evaluation of people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while
100’s of clinical assessment techniques and tools fall into 3 categories
Clinical interviews
Tests
Observations
All must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity
Characteristics of Assessment Tools
All clinicians must follow standardized procedures when they use a particular technique of assessment.
Reliability: the consistency of assessment measures. A good assessment will always yield the same results in the same situation.
Test-restest reliability: yields the same results every time
A person is tested twice to be sure that the same results are acquired.
The higher the correlation, the greater the test’s reliability
An assessment tool shows high interrater reliability (or interjudge)
Validity: accurately measuring what it is supposed to measure
Face validity: when something appears to be valid simply because it make sense and seems reasonable.
Predictive validity: a tool’s ability to predict the future characteristics or behavior
Concurrent validity: the degree to which the measures gathered from one tool agree with the measures gathered from other assessment techniques
Clinical Interviews
Clinical interview: a face-to-face encounter
Clinicians use the interview to collect detailed info about a persons problems and feelings, lifestyle and relationships.
Clinical Assessment, Diagnoses and Treatment
Clinical practioners main focus when faced with new clients is to gather ideographic information (individuals information) about them and understand them and their difficulties.
Clinical Assessment
Assessment: the collecting of relevant information in an effort to reach a conclusion.
Goes on in every realm of life (picking cereal or clothes)
Clinical Assessment: used to determine how and why a person is behaving abnormally and how that person may be helped.
Also enables the evaluation of people’s progress after they have been in treatment for a while
100’s of clinical assessment techniques and tools fall into 3 categories
Clinical interviews
Tests
Observations
All must be standardized and have clear reliability and validity
Characteristics of Assessment Tools
All clinicians must follow standardized procedures when they use a particular technique of assessment.
Reliability: the consistency of assessment measures. A good assessment will always yield the same results in the same situation.
Test-restest reliability: yields the same results every time
A person is tested twice to be sure that the same results are acquired.
The higher the correlation, the greater the test’s reliability
An assessment tool shows high interrater reliability (or interjudge)
Validity: accurately measuring what it is supposed to measure
Face validity: when something appears to be valid simply because it make sense and seems reasonable.
Predictive validity: a tool’s ability to predict the future characteristics or behavior
Concurrent validity: the degree to which the measures gathered from one tool agree with the measures gathered from other assessment techniques
Clinical Interviews
Clinical interview: a face-to-face encounter
Clinicians use the interview to collect detailed info about a persons problems and feelings, lifestyle and relationships.