Training in psychological assessment: Current practices of clinical psychology programs.

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DynamicDidactic

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Thought this may be an interesting article for SDN.

Training in psychological assessment has been studied periodically since 1960. The goal of this project was to provide an update of training practices in clinical psychology programs and to compare practices across Clinical-Science, Scientist-Practitioner, and Practitioner-Scholar training models. All APA-accredited programs in clinical psychology were invited to respond to an anonymous online survey about program characteristics and assessment training; a 33% response rate was achieved. Assessment training over the past decade was generally stable or increasing. Training in treatment effectiveness and neuropsychology were areas of growth. Across training models, there was remarkable similarity in assessment instruction except for coverage of projective instruments, number of required assessment courses, and training in geriatric assessment. The most popular instruments taught in clinical psychology programs were the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–IV, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–IV, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–II, the Beck Depression Inventory–II, and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Assessment coursework relevant to evidence-based practice, ethics, and multicultural issues may need more emphasis to support the development of core competencies in future generations of clinical psychologists.

I'm surprised how popular the MMPI remains and that the PAI is not as popular as I would have thought.

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Do we think the 33% response rate is a statement in and of itself?!
 
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I would say 33% is par for the course. Response rates in these types of surveys are often low and this seems to fit within the accepted rate.

I believe that the biggest bias is that results are based on good/decent programs. Theses are all accredited programs with an average internship match rate of 75%, so we are probably not including some of the big offending programs.
 
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I thought people usually did syllabus reviews for these sorts of studies. I don't know about some of those metrics (what's "more" or "less" coverage?). But I agree that the response rate could mean response bias, especially if these are mostly strong programs.
 
I'm surprised how popular the MMPI remains and that the PAI is not as popular as I would have thought.

I feel that in some ways, the MMPI-2 is sort of like the projective of objective personality/psychopathology measures. That, and given how much time folks can spend training in it, might explain why it's still so popular. Plus, there's the whole huge research literature behind it.

I was a fan of the PAI myself while in grad school, and the RF has (perhaps unsurprisingly) started growing on me; maybe its ties to the MMPI-2 will result in it seeing more research use and support than has been alloted to the PAI thus far.
 
I'm also surprised by the PAI results. I've always felt that the research supporting it was stronger than for the MMPI, even though the MMPI research is certainly more plentiful.

The survey is definitely unrepresentative of scholar-practitioner programs though. 96% reported having a match rate over 75% (the highest of all program types), which means that its only capturing the very small subset of those programs with solid match rates since we've seen what the full data looks like (that or the question was poorly worded and they are including all internships - not just APPIC match). The drop in projective testing is interesting. My program pretty much eliminated it around 10 years ago (we have one 3 hour lecture covering all of projectives). I think its important to discuss from a historical perspective and would actually have liked to see more discussion of the controversy, but I do think the inordinate amount of time many programs spend training people to actually administer the Rorschach is better spent elsewhere.
 
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I think its important to discuss from a historical perspective and would actually have liked to see more discussion of the controversy, but I do think the inordinate amount of time many programs spend training people to actually administer the Rorschach is better spent elsewhere.

Exactly, learn enough of it to learn why there are much better ways to do what the Rorschach purports to do, but only do it better, quicker, and with more accuracy.
 
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The survey is definitely unrepresentative of scholar-practitioner programs though. 96% reported having a match rate over 75% (the highest of all program types), which means that its only capturing the very small subset of those programs with solid match rates since we've seen what the full data looks like (that or the question was poorly worded and they are including all internships - not just APPIC match).
I bet its APPIC and not APA-only accreditation.
 
Thought this may be an interesting article for SDN.



I'm surprised how popular the MMPI remains and that the PAI is not as popular as I would have thought.

I agree. I really like the PAI over the MMPI-2, although I have gone back and forth on this. From what I know, the PAI has better construct validity, test-retest reliability and internal consistency than the MMPI-2, in general, for most of the clinical scales.

I know there are problems with the MCMI as well, but I also wish that more people would learn this test as well, as Millon's theory and how he integrates the constructs is really helpful.

Side note: I have never even heard of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment
 
I agree. I really like the PAI over the MMPI-2, although I have gone back and forth on this. From what I know, the PAI has better construct validity, test-retest reliability and internal consistency than the MMPI-2, in general, for most of the clinical scales.

I know there are problems with the MCMI as well, but I also wish that more people would learn this test as well, as Millon's theory and how he integrates the constructs is really helpful.

Side note: I have never even heard of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment

As a quick note, the Millon scales (and particularly the MBMD) are fairly popular in pre-surgical organ transplant and bariatric evaluations. But I agree--outside of those settings, I've not seen them used much. Unfortunately, I don't really know that it's possible to invalidate those measures, which could be a knock against them. Then again, at the same time, the base rate of over-reporting psychopathology in those settings is going to be a bit lower than in many other areas.
 
I use the millon stuff in the bariatric presurg evals. I switch back and forth with MMPI and PAI in the transplant and bariatric evals. I do find the PAI more user friedly much of the time.
 
I use the millon stuff in the bariatric presurg evals. I switch back and forth with MMPI and PAI in the transplant and bariatric evals. I do find the PAI more user friedly much of the time.

Agreed, and the interpretation is generally much more straightforward. I also like many of its subscales and the general way it's structured. The RF is a bit different in that respect, but there's still a good bit of carry-over/similarity between it and the PAI. Definitely seems to be less of a bear than the MMPI-2.
 
One of these days I'm going to read up on the -RF. I honestly don't have much of a use for it in my setting, but I've heard pretty good things about it, so I figure it'd be worthwhile to learn about more.
 
Last I recall, the literature had gotten a bit chippy between the Butcher/Williams and ben-porath camps.

I read a rebuttal article by Jim Butcher years ago (2008?) about the Lees-Haley's Fake Bad scale. It was completey missunderstanding the scale and population that it is applied to, from what I remember. Struck me as markedly uninformed for such a notable academic.
 
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Last I recall, the literature had gotten a bit chippy between the Butcher/Williams and ben-porath camps.

I've heard a bit of this as well, but I'm still a fan of the RF based on what I've seen and my experiences with it thus far. It also doesn't hurt that Ben-Porath generally does a solid job describing the measure, its development, and its interpretation during conference workshops and the like. I sat in on one a number of years ago at NAN when the measure was still fairly new, and have heard his talks since then have been great as well.
 
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