PhD/PsyD Can any psychologist administer psychological testing and assessment?

[InfoNerd101]

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Like a health psychologist or social psychologist for example? Or does it have to have a clinical psychologist?

 

[erg923]

Like a health psychologist or social psychologist for example? Or does it have to have a clinical psychologist?

A health psych is typically clinical trained. Social psychologists have no clinical training. In short, you need a license.

 

[bmedclinic]

A health psych is typically clinical trained. Social psychologists have no clinical training. In short, you need a license.

license is bare minimal. Competence is also understood to be necessary. For example, I (as a clinical health psychologist) cannot go and administer a new test that I've not been adequately trained to administer tomorrow to a patient, score it, and include it in a report without some sort of training, or at the very least, investing quite a bit of time to ensure that I'm following procedure properly.

 

[erg923]

license is bare minimal. Competence is also understood to be necessary. For example, I (as a clinical health psychologist) cannot go and administer a new test that I've not been adequately trained to administer tomorrow to a patient, score it, and include it in a report without some sort of training, or at the very least, investing quite a bit of time to ensure that I'm following procedure properly.

New tests are developed all the time (new editions of WAIS, WMS, various other measures). We need to read the manual and practice them of course before doing them, but what "training" are you wanting or referring to?

 

[Ollie123]

Let's be clear about context here. There is nothing wrong with a social psychologist giving a WAIS, CPT or any other test/assessment as part of a research battery. Heck, you can have high schoolers administer the things. Even a PhD level social psychologist may want/need clinical backup in certain situations (e.g. if suicidality is endorsed on the BDI...what to do).

If we are talking about conducting an evaluation and interpretation that is then given to the patient as feedback....then it needs to be a licensed psychologist. Or rather it should be, though there are grey areas (e.g. certain areas of I/O may involve giving feedback on employment-related tests, certain rare cases for industry jobs in cognitive/social, etc.).

 

[bmedclinic]

New tests are developed all the time (new editions of WAIS, WMS, various other measures). We need to read the manual and practice them of course before doing them, but what "training" are you wanting or referring to?

reading the manual and practicing them, like you said, and if outside your scope of general practice, perhaps consultation with someone more familiar.

 

[DrMikeP]

Like a health psychologist or social psychologist for example? Or does it have to have a clinical psychologist?

Any psychologist can administer a variety of testing if appropriately trained. The issue comes down to what the testing is administered for and what type of report/research one is trying to produce. One must practice within scope of competence.

Clinical Psychologists, including subspecialties within that category are often trained to administer psych testing to patients/clients, where other psychologists may be trained to administer testing for research. That said, I've seen psychologists who pursued more academic doctoral psychology degrees and then part of the way through add in elective work so as to be clinically competent for practice. When coursework is combined with a clinical internship and residency it's possible for those not in clinical psychology to get licensed.

However, if you want to do testing/assessment beyond just research, going the clinical route is the easier and more straight forward path.