PS280 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Conduct Disorder, Predictive Validity, Reference Group
Document Summary
Medical testing, psychophysiological or psychological testing, the completion of self-report scales: a diagnostic system provides a number of criteria for a disorder; If a certain number of these criteria or indications are present, the person is diagnosed as having that particular disorder. Therefore, info from each of the assessment procedures contributes to the formulation of a diagnosis. In the development of this diagnostic system, a large number of people would have been thoroughly assessed psychologically and physically, in terms of feelings, thoughts, behaviours and various other important features. A thorough history would have been taken in order to understand how various features developed. Various treatments would have been tried on groups of these patients, in a controlled fashion, to assess their effectiveness. Practicalities preclude us from being able to systematically observe and measure many aspects of functioning in large numbers of people, in a controlled way, over long periods of time.
