Welcome to Psychological Assessment .org, an Interactive, Online Professional Community

PsychologicalAssessment.org is a resource for psychological testing professionals (both those in practice and still learning as students) to discuss test interpretation, construction and any other issues involved in psychological evaluations. It is not simply an online journal, but it is also not just another static collection of links or another basic mailing list or discussion forum. While it is important to protect test items and content and uphold APA ethics code standards and priciples, this can be done in the public setting (such as information available in a public library).

Using simple blogging software which allows users to create a community blog, anyone who can read and type on a keyboard can post messages, articles, or respond to "published" opinions in the blog through comments or posts of their own. Keep in mind there are multiple categories so you can read the most recent posts, but also click on the categories you may be interested in to read and comment on posts related to those topics (also choose relevant categories when you post). Feel free to add your link to your website or offer relevant link suggestions, print published article suggestions, book or book chapter suggestions, etc. Though the commenting feature isn't exactly peer review, please try to communicate politely and professionaly when possible- its not generally intended or expected that posts would replace a published journal article such as from the American Psychological Association's "Psychological Assessment," nor should you consider the discussions necessarily peer-reviewed or having cleared any peer review process other than submitting opinions, original "articles," questions, concerns and issues for public comment. Once submitted your blog posts become public domain and this site gives permission to distribute them freely as long as the original source is cited. No copyright material can be posted unless you're clearly the owner with permission to post it. Psychologist Dr. Todd Finnerty will moderate the posts if any get too far in to the crazy spam world, but otherwise please feel free to express yourself. Psychologists, Psychometricians, counselors and anyone else interested in psychological testing are welcome to join us.

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Stay up to date with recent journal articles from Psychological Assessment

 Psychological Assessment - Vol 23, Iss 4 Updated : Sun, 29 Jan 2012 07:00:27 EST The latent structure of Multiphasic Sex Inventory–Assessed Pedophilic Interest. The Multiphasic Sex Inventory (MSI; Nichols & Molinder, 1984) is a self-report measure frequently used in the assessment of sex offenders. Scores on the MSI are often used to assess levels of pedophilic interest. However, the question of whether men with pedophilia represent a unique group distinguished by their sexual interests, or whether they are high-scorers on a continuum of sexual interest in children among men who sexually offend against children remains unanswered. Because no existing evidence points conclusively to pedophilia having either a categorical or continuous latent structure, it is unresolved whether MSI scores should be treated as a continuous measure of severity or whether a cut score should be used to categorize individuals as members of a pedophilic taxon. In the present study, the authors used 3 taxometric procedures to analyze the latent structure of pedophilic interest in a sample of 371 convicted child sex offenders. The results converged to indicate that pedophilic interest (as measured by the MSI) is dimensional. The implications of these findings for the assessment of pedophilic interest are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) Unresolved questions concerning the effectiveness of psychological assessment as a therapeutic intervention: Comment on Poston and Hanson (2010). In a recent article in this journal, Poston and Hanson (2010) reported a meta-analysis of 17 studies on the use of psychological assessment as a therapeutic intervention (PATI) and concluded that “psychological assessment procedures—when combined with personalized, collaborative, and highly involving test feedback—have positive, clinically meaningful effects on treatment” (Poston & Hanson, 2010, p. 203). Although extant data suggest that PATI can sometimes exert positive effects, Poston and Hanson's (2010) meta-analysis may overstate the magnitude of these effects because the authors (a) included several studies that combined assessment with treatment components that are irrelevant to PATI, sometimes rendering it impossible to attribute any observed effects to PATI per se and (b) excluded numerous nonsignificant results. Moreover, the studies Poston and Hanson (2010) reviewed neglected to rule out Barnum effects as alternative explanations for client improvement, raising the possibility that PATI works for reasons other than those proposed by its advocates. We conclude that Poston and Hanson's (2010) review leaves a number of lingering questions concerning the treatment utility of PATI unanswered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) Defining mindfulness by how poorly I think I pay attention during everyday awareness and other intractable problems for psychology's (re)invention of mindfulness: Comment on Brown et al. (2011). The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from an age-old systematic phenomenological program to investigate subjective experience. Recent enthusiasm for “mindfulness” in psychology has resulted in proliferation of self-report inventories that purport to measure mindful awareness as a trait. This paper addresses a number of intractable issues regarding these scales, in general, and also specifically highlights vulnerabilities of the adult and adolescent forms of the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale. These problems include (a) lack of available external referents for determining the construct validity of these inventories, (b) inadequacy of content validity of measures, (c) lack of evidence that self-reports of mindfulness competencies correspond to actual behavior and evidence that they do not, (d) lack of convergent validity among different mindfulness scales, (e) inequivalence of semantic item interpretation among different groups, (f) response biases related to degree of experience with mindfulness practice, (g) conflation of perceived mindfulness competencies with valuations of importance or meaningfulness, and (h) inappropriateness of samples employed to validate questionnaires. Current self-report attempts to measure mindfulness may serve to denature, distort, and banalize the meaning of mindful awareness in psychological research and may adversely affect further development of mindfulness-based interventions. Opportunities to enrich positivist Western psychological paradigms with a detailed and complex Buddhist phenomenology of the mind are likely to require a depth of understanding of mindfulness that, in turn, depends upon direct and long-term experience with mindfulness practice. Psychologists should consider pursuing this avenue before attempting to characterize and quantify mindfulness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) A comparison of the concurrent and predictive validity of three measures of readiness to change alcohol use in a clinical sample of adolescents. The authors compared 3 measures of readiness to change alcohol use commonly used in clinical research and practice with adolescents: the Readiness Ruler, the SOCRATES (subscales of Recognition and Taking Steps), and a Staging Algorithm. The analysis sample consisted of 161 male and female adolescents presenting for intensive outpatient alcohol-abuse treatment who reported current alcohol use at the initial assessment. Evidence for concurrent validity was assessed by computing simple correlations of each readiness measure with the other 3 and of each readiness measure with drinking behavior (percentage of days abstinent [PDA] and drinks per drinking day [DDD], respectively, in the last 30 days) at the start of treatment and at the 6-month follow-up assessment. Evidence for predictive validity was based on percentage of independent variance accounted for by each of the readiness measures in predicting drinking behavior at 6 months from the start of treatment, and then in predicting drinking behavior at 12 months from the readiness assessment at 6 months. The results showed that all but Recognition had good concurrent validity, the Readiness Ruler score showed consistent evidence for predictive validity, and the Staging Algorithm showed good predictive validity for DDD at 6 and 12 months. For the 82 participants with an alcohol-use disorder diagnosis, the findings for the Ruler and Recognition were similar, but the Staging Algorithm had poorer prediction of DDD at 12 months, and Taking Steps was a better predictor of 6- and 12-month PDA and DDD. Research and clinical implications of the findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) Cognitive and developmental influences in visual-motor integration skills in young children. Measures of visual–motor integration skills continue to be widely used in psychological assessments with children. However, the construct validity of many visual–motor integration measures remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the relative contributions of maturation and cognitive skills to the development of visual–motor integration skills in young children (N = 856). We used a block regression analysis to determine the contribution of maturation, as indicated by age, followed by broad cognitive factors (Study 1) and subsequently by individual subtests in verbal and nonverbal domains subsumed under each factor (Study 2) in explaining score variance of the Bender Visual–Motor Gestalt Test (2nd ed.; BG–II; Brannigan & Decker, 2003) Copy and Recall scores in children between the ages of 4 and 7 years. Results confirm that maturation accounted for a large proportion of variance in both BG–II Copy and Recall performance, above which Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale (5th ed.; SB-5; Roid, 2003) Quantitative Reasoning and Fluid Reasoning factors significantly contributed to visual–motor integration performance for the Copy phase, and SB–5 Quantitative Reasoning and Visual-Spatial factors accounted for a significant amount of variance for the Recall phase. Additionally, nonverbal domains were more related to visual-motor performance than verbal domains. Results from this study are interpreted to suggest nonverbal reasoning and visual–spatial attention are important contributing factors to visual–motor integration, as measured by the BG-II. Developmental implications of visual–motor integration skills, nonverbal problem solving, and mathematical competence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved) RSS Parser Increase Traffic

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