PSY 3617 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Intercultural Competence, Psychometrics, Personality Disorder
Week 5 Book Notes
Ch. 10- Personality Assessment and Behavioral Assessment
▪ Multimethod Assessment
o Multimethod assessment: an approach to assessment introduced in DSM-III by which
mental health professionals can provide diagnostic information on each of five distinct
axes or domains
o Evidence-based assessment: an approach to assessment emphasizing those methods
that have strong psychometrics, clinical utility, and normative data sensitive to issues of
diversity such as age, gender, race and ethnicity
▪ "good" test-retest reliability as the same .70 level "over a period of several
months"
▪ Typically target their assessment strategies toward a particular diagnosis or
problem
▪ Culturally Competent Assessment
o Cultural competence: for clinical psychologists, the ability to work sensitively and
expertly with culturally diverse members of a heterogeneous society
o Overpathologizing: viewing as abnormal that which is actually normal; can be reduced
by increasing cultural competence
▪ Objective Personality Tests
o Objective personality tests: personality tests characterized by unambiguous test items, a
limited range of client responses, and objective scoring
o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2): current version of the most
widely used comprehensive objective personality test, published in 1989
▪ Starke Hathaway and J.C. McKinley: creators of the MMPI
▪ Empirically (rather than theoretically)) elicits different responses
▪ Empirical criterion keying: the method of test construction used in the creation
of the MMPI, which involves identifying distinct groups of people, asking all of
them to respond to the same test items, and selecting items that yield different
patterns of responses between groups
▪ Clinical scale: one of 10 scales on the MMPI and MMPI-2 indicating the extent to
which individual endorses symptoms of a particular category
▪ Test-taking attitudes: the manner in which the test taker approaches a test, as
measured by the validity scales of the MMPI and MMPI-2
▪ Validity scales: scales of the MMPI and MMPI-2 that inform the psychologist
about the client's approach to the test and allow the psychologist to determine
whether the test is valid and what kinds of adjustments might be appropriate to
make during the process of interpreting the clinical scales
▪ Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A): revision of
the MMPI for adolescent clients (14-18) published in 1992
▪ Supplemental scales: in addition to the clinical scales, scales of the MMPI and
MMPI-2 that provide relevant clinical information
▪ Content scales: in addition to the clinical scales, scales of the MMPI and MMPI-2
that provide relevant clinical information
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