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No type of assessment has engendered as much controversy as projective techniques. For some, projectives are synonymous with personality testing and provide some of the richest sources of clinical information on children and adolescents (Hughes, Gacono, & Owen, 2007; Rabin, 1986; Weiner, 1986). For others, projective techniques typically do not meet even the minimum of basic psychometric standards,...
Direct observation of a child’s or adolescent’s overt behavior has held a revered status in the clinical assessment of youth. Frequently, the validity of other methods of assessment is judged by their correspondence with direct observations of behavior. In fact, behavioral observation is often viewed as synonymous with the practice of behavioral assessment (Shapiro & Skinner, 1990). There are...
Early identification of toddlers and preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is important for ensuring that these youth receive targeted early intervention services. Identifying young children with ASD is complicated by overlap among symptoms of ASD and other developmental delays. Additionally, youth with ASD have a higher risk of experiencing co-occurring challenging behaviors...
What is meant by the term adaptive behavior? What are the typical domains of adaptive behavior scales? How is adaptive behavior different from other constructs such as personality or intelligence? What are some of the most popular adaptive behavior scales? The adaptive behavior construct traces its roots to early work in mental retardation, which, in turn, is linked...
What are some findings from research on Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that have important implications for designing clinical assessments for children suspected of having ADHD?
Why is assessing a child’s family context important in the clinical assessment of children’s emotional and behavioral functioning? What dimensions of a child’s family context are most important to the assessment process? How can one assess these important dimensions of family functioning? In the summary of research on childhood psychopathology provided in Chap. 3, one of the more...
How are autism-spectrum disorders defined by the DSM-IV? How is autism differentiated from mental retardation? What types of scales or strategies are most useful for the assessment of children with these syndromes? What is the recommended approach for the assessment of autism spectrum disorders? Autism is believed to affect 1 in 500 children (Bertrand et al., 2001), yet it...
For many clinicians, behavior and personality have been traditionally evaluated by assessing behavior patterns and interpolating these behaviors as reflecting underlying personality variables (Martin, 1988).
What are the core symptoms of childhood depression and anxiety? Which informant(s) and assessment strategies are most useful for the diagnosis of depression and anxiety? What developmental factors need to be considered in assessment of child/adolescent depression and anxiety? What factors contribute to better or worse prognosis for childhood depression and anxiety? It is commonplace...
lHow does the call for evidence-based assessment lend itself to report writing? lHow does a clinician clarify the referral question? lWhat are the common mistakes made in report writing? lHow should assessment results be reported to parents in conferences? Presenting assessment results orally or in writing can be a foreboding task. However, this process is central to assessment...
Users of instruments assessing personality and other aspects of behavioral, emotional, and social functioning should have a thorough understanding of measurement principles. The discussion that follows, however, hardly qualifies as thorough because measurement instruction is not the purpose of this book. This chapter merely points out some of the most important measurement concepts for conducting...
Personality assessment is a process that most individuals engage in throughout their lives (Martin, 1988). Mothers label their children as happy, cranky, or similarly shortly after birth, and often in utero (e.g., active). The musings of Alfred Binet about the personality of his two daughters are typical of observations made by parents. He described Madeleine as silent, cool, and concentrated, while...
A recurrent theme in this text is that an assessor needs to have knowledge of several areas of basic research to appropriately select and interpret psychological tests for children and adolescents. In this chapter, we consider another area of competence crucial to clinical assessment that goes beyond knowing how to administer specific tests. It is rather difficult to discuss this competence in objective...
Peer-referenced assessment strategies are assessment techniques in which a child or adolescent’s social, emotional, or behavioral functioning is assessed by obtaining the perceptions of the child’speers. One of the most common types of peer-referenced assessment is the sociometric assessment, in which the child’s acceptance in or rejection by his or her peer group is determined. We discuss...
A basic assumption underlying the writing of this text is that, to be competent in the clinical assessment of children and adolescents, much more knowledge is required than being able to simply administer tests, this being the easier part. Many other crucial areas of expertise are necessary for appropriately selecting the tests to be administered and for interpreting them after administration. One...
It has long been recognized that children are often less-than-accurate reporters of their own behavior. Furthermore, children may not have sufficient reading or oral expression skills for self-report purposes (Lachar, 1990). Problems with underreporting and response sets have always been well-recognized by clinicians and, to some extent, have been documented by research (see previous chapter). These...
At its conception, the original K-ABC represented a marked departure from other commonly used cognitive assessments. Based on a combination of theoretical underpinnings from cerebral specialization research, Luria-Das successive-simultaneous processing, and work in cognitive psychology, the K-ABC was one of the first intelligence tests to be principally derived from a strong theoretical basis and...
The use of self-report inventories with children is a relatively new phenomenon. It was heretofore commonly believed that children could not accurately report on their own feelings, perceptions, and behaviors. As a result, parent and teacher reports have routinely been preferred over the use of self-report inventories in child personality assessment. One of the first popular child assessment instruments,...
What are some reasons why assessment information may differ depending on who is providing it? What are the issues involved in using simple (equal weighing) or complex (unequal weighing) methods for combining information from different sources? How might age of the child and type of behavior affect the agreement between different sources on a child’s or adolescent’s adjustment? Throughout...
The majority of problems that occur in applied clinical assessment are due not to inherent flaws in the tests, but to the inappropriate use of tests, and misinterpretation of their results, by clinicians (Anastasi, 1992). Test misuse is primarily due to substandard practice by clinicians, just as most auto accidents are caused by driver error and not by the car per se. Even a widely used and accepted...
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