This article summarizes evidence and issues associated with psychological assessment. Data from more than 125 meta-analyses on test validity and 800 samples examining multimethod assessment suggest 4 general conclusions: (a) Psychological test validity is strong and compelling, (b) psychological test validity is comparable to medical test validity, (c) distinct assessment methods provide unique...

Item response theory (IRT) has become a popular methodological framework for modeling response data from assessments in education and health; however, its use is not widespread among psychologists. This paper aims to provide a didactic application of IRT and to highlight some of these advantages for psychological test development. IRT was applied to two scales (a positive and a negative affect ...

Clinical psychologists are frequently called on to testify in court regarding mental health issues in civil or criminal cases. One of the legal criteria by which admissibility of testimony is determined includes whether the testimony is based on methods that have gained "general acceptance" in their field. In this study, we sought to evaluate the psychological tests used in forensic assessments...

Lithium, manic-depressive illness, and psychological test performance For over 10 years patients responding to treatment at a lithium clinic' have been free from psychiatric symptoms. Little is known about the psychological performance of such patients, but a report,2 using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), confirmed that lithium produces a response in depression. Clinical...

Clinical ecologists report that exposure to allergens can induce cognitive and emotional symptoms as well as somatic symptoms in susceptible individuals, but controlled tests are meager. In a test of the hypothesis that sublingual exposure to allergens would produce cognitive-emotional symptoms in allergy patients, double-blind provocative testing was conducted at an allergy clinic; 30 allergy ...

objectives: the objective behind this study was investigating the relationships between family functioning and psychological hardiness in parents of exceptional children versus parents of normal children. methods: the study was causal-comparative. population included all parents of normal and exceptional students in bojnurd city studying in ordinary and exceptional schools in the academic year ...