Exposure to Assessments

 

Psychological testing or assessment skills are a heavy emphasis in Clinical Psychology doctoral programs.  I recommend students that want to be competitive in the field gain experience before the start of their doctoral program.  Some Master's level programs offer courses on psychological assessments like the Wechsler's Adult Intelligence Scale-IV(WAIS-IV), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) in addition to others.  Students should consult either the prospective doctoral program's curriculum guide (available on the school's site) or a faculty member at the school about assessment courses that are required for the specific program.  If you, as a student, are not adamant about attending one specific program, then see what psychological assessment courses the majority of programs you are applying to require students to take.

Before choosing assessing courses, it could be helpful to read about the various types of psychological tests available.  Knowing what tests are used in the field may help students narrow down which tests will be best for them to learn in consideration with their specialty interests (i.e., Neuropsychology, Pediatrics, Intellectual Developmental Disabilities, Social/Personality Psychology, Developmental Psychology, etc.) and theoretical orientation in psychology (Cognitive Behavior, Psychodynamic, or Existential-Humanistic).  Below, I include recommended texts for learning more about psychological testing.  These texts cover the following topics: purpose of psychological assessment; history of assessments; overview of most popular assessments; recommendations for administering tests, ethics in administering, scoring, and interpreting tests; and tips on report writing.  

Overall, I cannot stress how important psychological assessments are to become a licensed psychologist.  The creation and administration of psychological assessments are tasks that make psychologists unique in the behavioral health field.  To be clear, doctoral programs will require a number of assessment courses.  Each program will train students on the assessments, but students that come in with prior knowledge and experience will be ahead of the curve.  Also, keep in mind that having experience in psychological assessments will make you a more attractive applicant to a doctoral committee.  While doctoral programs are willing to train new students, they prefer to accept students that are already somewhat knowledgeable about psychology and its practice and who still have the potential to advance their skills.  Lastly, there are text on specific assessments, but for now, I will only mention texts that provide an overview of psychological assessments.  However, for students looking for good references for specific tests should see the Essentials of WAIS-IV, Essentials of TAT and Other Storytelling Assessments, Essentials of MMPI-2, etc.

Readings for learning about psychological assessments:

Older editions of many of these exist for these books, but for up-to-date information on assessments, these newer editions are recommended.

Anastasi, A., Urbina, S., & Anastasi, A. (1997). Psychological Testing. (12th ed). New York: Prentice Hall

Aiken, L., & Groth-Marnat (2005). Psychological Testing and Assessment. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Carson, R. C. (1990). Assessment; what role the assessor? Journal of Personality Assessment, 54, 435-445.

Edwards, J. E., & Bagozzi, R.P. (2000). On the nature and direction of relationships between constructs and measures. Psychological Methods, 5, 155-174.

Flanagan, D. P., Genshaft, J., & Harrison, P. L. (Eds.). (2012). Contemporary Intellectual Assessment: Theories, Tests, and Issues. New York: The Guilford Press.

Groth-Marnat. (2009). Handbook of Psychological Assessment (5th ed). New York: John Wiley. *(NOTE: 6th edition 2016 version can be pre-ordered from Amazon.).

Jensen, A. (1980). Bias in Mental Testing. New York: The Free Press.

Jensen, A. (1998). The g Factor: the science of mental ability. Westport, Cr: Praeger.

Kaplan, R. M., & Saccuzzo, D. P. (2012). Psychological Testing: Principles, Applications, and Issues. New York: Brooks/Cole.

Malgady, R. (1996). The question of cultural bias in assessment and diagnosis of ethnic minority clients: Let's reject the null hypothesis. Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 27(1), 73-77.

Matarazzo, J. D. (1992). Psychological testing and assessment in the 21 st century. American Psychologist, 47(8), 1007-1018

Messick, S. J. (1995). Validity of psychological assessment. American Psychologist, 11, 263-272.

Sternberg, R. J., Wagner, R. K., Williams, W. M., Horvath, J. A., & et al., (1995). Testing common sense. American Psychologist, 50(1), 912-927.