A
ssessment has long been an important activity
of clinical psychologists. In the previous chap-ter, we touched on assessment in our discussion of
the diagnosis of mental disorders. In this chapter, the
focus is on interviewing. Subsequent chapters will
deal with the assessment of intelligence, personality
and psychopathology, and behavior, along with the
process of clinical judgment. Before we plunge into
the specifics of interviewing, however, let us make a
few general comments about assessment.
Assessment in Clinical Psychology
As mentioned in Chapter 2, psychological assessment
as an area of emphasis has seen its ups and downs.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there seemed to be a
decline in interest in psychological assessment (Abeles,
1990). Therapy was the more glamorous enterprise,
and assessment almost seemed somehow“unfair”to
clients. It appeared that clinical psychology’shistorical
commitment to assessment was waning. The prevail-
ing attitude about assessment was“Let the technicians
do it!”But in the 1980s, something else began to
happen. Students began to show an interest in speciali-
zation. They discovered forensic psychology (the
application of psychology to legal issues), or they
became intrigued by pediatric psychology, geriatrics,
or even neuropsychology.
This renewed interest in psychological assess-
ment has carried forward in time. Currently, clinical
psychologists more and more use an evidenced-
based approach to clinical assessment. Evidence-
based assessment (EBA; Hunsley & Mash, 2007)
uses theory and knowledge about psychological pro-
blems to help in the selection of assessment methods
and measures, as well as to guide the actual process of
assessment itself. Such an approach overcomes many
of the weaknesses of past assessment practices,
including a“one-test-fits-all”test selection approach,
the use of poorly validated measures, unreliable test
interpretation, and the use of tests with limited evi-
dence for treatment utility (Hunsley & Mash, 2007).
In other words, clinical psychologists must be
properly trained to know about the assessment pro-
cess itself, about the conditions to be evaluated, and
about the psychometric properties of assessment
methods and measures that are available to address
the specific assessment situation at hand.Definition and Purpose
Before proceeding, it is important to provide a defi-
nition of psychological assessment and outline some
of its goals and features. Psychological assessment can
be formally defined in many ways. Clinical assess-
ment involves an evaluation of an individual’sor
family’s strengths and weaknesses, a conceptualiza-
tion of the problem at hand (as well as possible etio-
logical factors), and some prescription for alleviating
the problem; all of these lead us to a better under-
standing of the client. Assessment is not something
that is done once and then is forever finished. In
many cases, it is an ongoing process—even an every-
day process, as in psychotherapy. Whether the clini-
cian is making decisions or solving problems, clinical
assessment is the means to the end.
Intuitively, we all understand the purpose of diag-
nosis or assessment. Before physicians can prescribe a
treatment, they must first understand the nature of the
illness. Before plumbers can begin soldering pipes, they
must first determine the character and location of the
difficulty. What is true in medicine and plumbing is
equally true in clinical psychology. Aside from a few
cases involving pure luck, our capacity to solve clinical
problems is directly related to our skill in defining
them. Most of us can remember our parents’stern
admonition:“Think before you act!”In a sense, this
is the essence of the assessment or diagnostic process.
To illustrate this idea, consider the following case.The Referral
The assessment process begins with a referral.
Someone—a parent, a teacher, a psychiatrist, a
judge, or perhaps a psychologist—poses a question
about the patient. “Why is Juan disobedient?”
“Why can’t Alicia learn to read like the other chil-
dren?”“Is the patient’s impoverished behavioral162 CHAPTER 6