Describes the Psychological Screening Inventory, a relatively brief, easy to administer, and score screening instrument. A comprehensive review of the empirical literature suggests moderate reliability, generally stable factor structure, and adequate validity, particularly for use with college undergraduates, with reformatory and prison inmates,…

Real and perceived misuses of educational tests, errors in test scoring and test use, and incidents of cheating on tests have been widely reported in local and national media. As educational tests take on additional importance for students, teachers, and schools, there is appropriate concern about the quality of assessments and the appropriate use…

Reviews and integrates existing child and adolescent Hand Test research for use with school systems. Examines reliability and validity of the instrument along with moderating variables that impact interpretation. Favorably views the Hand Test as a brief protective technique that can easily be integrated into school psychologists' test battery.…

Converging lines of evidence suggest that attorneys are influencing data relied on by psychological experts in forensic cases, usually by advising clients how to respond to psychological tests or by prompting them in other ways. This article alerts psychologists to this threat to the validity of psychological and neuropsychological evaluations.…

While the reliability and validity of Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS) scores have been established with outpatient adults being treated in community psychiatric clinics, it has not been used in special or dually diagnosed populations. Establishes internal consistency, concurrent validity, and construct validity for both the clinical…

Argues that the apparent lack of empirical support for the practice of profile analysis has stemmed in part from the use of statistical techniques that have neglected to explore the perspective of the clinician. Explores Configural Frequency Analysis, a statistical technique focusing on the relationships among groups of participants as the unit of…

The 1985 edition of the American Psychological Association's "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" has greatly expanded its coverage of the testing of handicapped students. Recent surveys of practitioners' knowledge of basic testing and measurement concepts suggest the need for extensive in-service training if these…

Psychological assessment, a subspecialty of psychology has served as one of the earliest proving grounds of automated technology. This Special Series highlights some of the advances in computerized psychological assessment methods and discusses some of the lingering issues and contemporary problems with automated psychological assessment…

Examines problems and concerns of cross cultural counseling and psychotherapy. Raises specific questions concerning research designs and approaches, differences in cosmology, epistemology, differences in nosology, and problems of evaluation or testing. (JAC)

The EA:es index (part of the Comprehensive Rorschach System) is discussed, demonstrating how conceptual difficulties and abstract jargon can result in misleading and contradictory inferences. The comments of J. E. Exner, Jr., and the response of J. H. Kleiger concern the importance of theory in Rorschach interpretation. (SLD)

Addresses the problem of the equivalence of linguistically translated items that form measurement scales used to assess psychological traits or constructs in source and target cultures and languages. Outlines assessment procedures that are standardized but that also reflect cultural-specific concepts and values. (PS)

Many individuals working in education-related professions have a variety of needs for educational and psychological tests results regarding their students or clients. This chapter addresses school counselors' use of tests in educational settings and the right to test as a competency-based issue. Although the subject appears on the surface not to…

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is an appropriate assessment tool for adolescent clients at least 12 years old. Theoretical principles of the TAT are discussed. Rationales and protocols for administration are presented. The TAT is favorably reviewed, although it is noted that there is a need for additional research to further demonstrate its…

Surveys 354 nationally certified school psychologists on the perceived usefulness of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III) in general and profile analysis in particular. Practitioners rated the WISC-III as very useful for determining diagnosis and educational placement, but less useful for developing instructional strategies…

This article focuses on Louis Guttman's contributions to the classical theory of educational and psychological tests, one of the lesser known of his many contributions to quantitative methods in the social sciences. Guttman's work in this field provided a rigorous mathematical basis for ideas that, for many decades after Spearman's initial work,…