Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

C h a p t e r 4Standards and FairnessChapter Questionsl Are professional guidelines availablefor the assessment of individuals fromdiverse cultural, linguistic, ethnic, economicand other backgrounds?l Why is it problematic to use the phrase,“valid test?”The majority of problems that occurin applied clinical assessment are duenot to inherent flaws in the tests, butto the inappropriate use of tests, andmisinterpretation of their results, byclinicians (Anastasi, 1992). Test misuse isprimarily due to substandard practice byclinicians, just as most auto accidents arecaused by driver error and not by the carper se. Even a widely used and accepted testcan become a tool for disserving a client.And these cases of misuse are common,and include misuses ranging from incorrectscoring to interpretations of scores thathave not been shown to be valid by severalindependent research studies (Eydeet al., 1993). Consequently, psychologicalassessment practice has long been governedby peer-developed guidelines and standardsthat have proliferated and become moreexplicit and sophisticated as the fieldmatures (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999). Thischapter is devoted to providing an executivesummary of some of the major publicationsin this area, especially those developed byrelevant learned societies. It also providesguidance for practice based on some of themost widely cited ethical principles, teststandards, regulations, and recent treatisesthat give suggestions for assessing diverseclientele. (A self examination for enhancingretention of these issues is given in Box 4.1.)67P.J. Frick et al., Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and Behavior,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0641-0_4, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010