Encyclopedia of Psychological Assessment

by: Rocı´o Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros Psychological assessment is the discipline of scientific psychology devoted to the study of a given human subject (or group of subjects) in a specific applied field (clinical, educational, work, etc.), by means of scientific tools (tests and other measurement instruments), with the purpose of answering clients’ demands that require scientific operations such as describing, diagnosing, predicting, explaining or changing the behaviour of that subject (Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros et al., 2001). Therefore, from this perspective, psychological assessment cannot be reduced to any of its applied fields (it has sometimes been reduced to the clinical field: e.g. Meyer et al., 2001; Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros, 2002) or to specific scientific tools (it has been reduced to psychological testing: e.g. Anastasi, 1988) or to a scientific operation (in the past it was usually reduced to diagnosis and prediction). Psychological assessment is one of the key disciplines of psychology, being an ever-present applied task in the activity of any psychologist (Bomholt, 1996; Greenberg, Smith & Muenzen, 1995). Researchers and professionals of all kinds (in the clinical, work, educational, etc., fields) are faced with the task of assessing, in one way or another, relevant variables in the particular individual or group of individuals that constitute the object of study. Whether this assessment is made by means of sophisticated equipment in the laboratory, through psychological tests, or through non-structured interviews and other qualitative techniques, the same condition applies: any type of psychological assessment device requires methodological evaluation and scientific guarantees.