References 297Association Psychological Assessment Work Group that doc-
ument the validity of a broad range of assessment methods
and their utility in clinical health care and other applied set-
tings (Kubiszyn et al., 2000; Meyer et al., 2001).
And yet these are also trying times for assessment, due
primarily to negative forces operating from outside psychol-
ogy and from within our own ranks as well. From the outside,
psychological assessment practice has been buffeted by the
priorities placed by managed care agencies on delivering
health services in the quickest and least expensive way possi-
ble. Such priorities severely restrict support for complex and
time-consuming evaluation procedures conducted by doc-
toral level professionals. In common with other health care
professionals specializing in evaluation procedures, assess-
ment psychologists doing primarily clinical work have had
their practices curtailed by the advent of managed care, and
there has in recent years been some decline in the frequency
with which comprehensive multimethod assessments using
full-length measures are conducted (Eisman et al., 2000;
Piotrowski, 1999; Piotrowski, Belter, & Keller, 1998).
Within psychology’s ranks, contemporary trends in gradu-
ate education have compromised the caliber of assessment
training provided in many psychology programs. Striving to
achieve breadth and diversity in a crowded curriculum, grad-
uate faculty have been prone to undervalue assessment skills,
to disregard the unique significance of assessment for psy-
chology’s professional identity, and to consider internship
centers responsible for assessment training. These attitudes
have been reflected in reduced course offerings and decreased
requirements in assessment, sometimes consisting of little
more than exposure to the mechanics of a few selected tests,
without hands-on experience in integrating assessment data
collected from multiple sources into carefully crafted written
reports. Recent surveys of internship directors identify con-
siderable dissatisfaction on their part with the assessment
training students are receiving in many graduate programs,
and they report that the majority of graduate students arriving
at their centers come poorly prepared to conduct evaluations
(see Clemence & Handler, 2001; Stedman, Hatch, & Schoen-
feld, 2000).
What lies ahead for assessment psychology? Although
definitely wounded by managed care, the field does not
appear to have sustained any life-threatening injuries. The
chapters in Volume 10 of the Handbook attest the continuing
breadth and vitality of the field, in productive research as
well as useful applications, and practitioners on the average
appear to have had moderate success in finding sufficient de-
mand for their services. Hence, although health maintenance
organizations have posed a distinct threat to the viability of
comprehensive assessment and disrupted the professional
lives of many psychologists, there is reason to believe that
both quality assessment and its practitioners are succeeding
in weathering this storm.
Of greater concern than managed care is the matter of
how and where the next generation of potential researchers
and practitioners will be trained in assessment psychology.
No matter how well-intended, the argument that assessment
training belongs in internships rather than in graduate pro-
grams poses a more serious threat to the future of assessment
psychology than issues of how fees for service will be paid.
Taking assessment out of the graduate curriculum separates it
from its academic base and discourages students from be-
coming involved in or enthusiastic about assessment-related
research. Relegating assessment training to the internship—
which means in many cases that the internship center must
provide basic instruction in assessment methods before in-
terns can even begin to conduct comprehensive evalua-
tions—restricts the time available for students to develop
even minimal competence as assessors. A further argument
sometimes heard, that assessment competence is a special-
ized skill to be acquired by interested students in postdoctoral
programs or workshops, is even more ill-advised. Assess-
ment being learned mainly as a postdoctoral specialty would
divorce the field even further from its research base and sub-
tract it even further from the core content of psychology with
which graduate students are made familiar.
Needed now and in the years ahead, then, to perpetuate the
scientific and professional advancement of assessment psy-
chology, is enlightened orchestration of graduate education.
Graduate programs should be carefully crafted to acquaint
students with the nature of assessment psychology and its
place in psychology’s history; to provide opportunities for
students to become involved in assessment research and to
gain appreciation for the practical value of good assessment;
and, for students in applied areas, to include pre-internship
experience in conducting multimethod psychological evalua-
tions and integrating the data obtained from them. Only then
will assessment psychology be able in the future as in the past
to contribute to expanded understanding of human behavior
and the delivery of helpful psychological services.REFERENCESAckerman, M. J., & Ackerman, M. C. (1997). Custody evaluation
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American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statisti-
cal manual of mental disorders(4th ed., text rev.). Washington,
DC: Author.