Psychological Tests: Handbooks and dictionaries

The Handbook of Psychiatric Measures describes how to choose and use mental health/psychiatric assessment tools and evaluate available measures. These measures cover a range of assessment domains including: symptoms, function, and outcomes. Each measure is evaluated for its components, reliability, validity, and clinical utility, including its strengths and weaknesses.

The purpose of the Handbook is to provide clinicians working in mental health or primary care settings with a compendium of the available rating scales and tests that may be useful in the clinical care of their patients or for their use in the interpretation of treatment and services research studies. In addition, the manual is designed to provide guidance to clinicians, policy makers, and planners on how to select, use and interpret clinical measures. The primary audience for the book, however, is psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians.

More and more employees are having to sit psychometric tests as part of the interviewing process. On paper, a person's skills and experience may perfectly fit the job description, but the employer also wants to know things about the individual's personality: for example, their weak and strong points; whether they will fit in with the department; whether they can retain information quickly; and whether they have management potential or whether they will always require supervision. This book is designed to help the individual master taking psychometric tests, and help them decide, before applying for a job, what their individual personality type is - extrovert, emotional, creative or assertive. Working through the tests will give the reader the ability to improve their skills in the key areas of lateral thinking, problem solving, and intelligence, and the book also provides a guide to assessing performance. Familiarity with the type of questions set in psychometric tests will give readers an idea of what to expect, and will help them relax in a test situation

Summary

Today, as practitioners in all areas of the human services are increasingly held accountable for monitoring and evaluating their practices in an objective and efficient manner, a sound familiarity with objective measurement is more essential than ever before. In addition, practitioners must also be concerned with satisfying a dizzying array of state, agency, health maintenance organization, and insurance company guidelines.For more than twelve years, through two highly acclaimed editions and now in an updated and expanded third edition, Kevin Corcoran and Joel Fischer's standard reference,Measures for Clinical Practice,has enabled professionals to gather this vital information easily and effectively. InMeasures for Clinical Practice, Volume 1: Couples, Families, and Children,andVolume 2: Adults,Corcoran and Fischer provide an extensive collection of more than 400"rapid assessment instruments" (RAIs), including many questionnaires and scales, which assess virtually any problem commonly encountered in clinical practice. Corcoran and Fischer have revised this edition to reflect new research and contemporary clinical practices. They include new scales and materials in areas such as assessment in culturally diverse populations and measurement in managed care systems, as well as the best instruments updated from the previous editions.Brief and easy to administer, these "best practice measures" will be useful for all types of therapeutic and theoretical orientations. All instruments are actually reprinted in the book, and are carefully introduced and evaluated to aid in their selection. Corcoran and Fischer explain the principles of measurement and how to apply them in practice. They explore the range of assessment techniques available, including behavioral observations, rating scales, and client logs, as well as unobtrusive, electromechanical, and standardized measures. And after examining the advantages and disadvantages of rapid assessment instruments, they show practitioners how to effectively select and administer these measures as part of the treatment process.More comprehensive than ever, this edition ofMeasures for Clinical Practiceis essential to every practitioner and student of social work, psychology, psychiatry, nursing, counseling, and the rehabilitative therapies.

"The major source of infornmation on the availability of standardized tests". -- Wilson Library Bulletin
Covers commercially available standardized tests and hard-to-locate research instruments.

The updated and expanded fourth edition of the highly acclaimed classic text on psychological assessment The Handbook of Psychological Assessment, Fourth Edition presents a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a comprehensive psychological evaluation. It provides a complete review of the most commonly used assessment instruments and the most efficient methods for selecting and administering tests, evaluating data, and integrating results into a coherent, problem-solving report. Updated reviews and interpretive guidelines are included for the most frequently used assessment techniques, including structured and unstructured interviews

Positive Psychological Assessment is a primer for practitioners and researchers striving to incorporate assessment of human strengths, resources, and fulfillments into their work. Contributors aptly examine the scientific underpinnings and practical applications of measures of hope, optimism, self-efficacy, problem-solving, locus of control, creativity, wisdom, courage, positive emotion, self-esteem, love, emotional intelligence, empathy, attachment, forgiveness, humor, gratitude, faith, morality, coping, well-being, and quality of life. Vocational and multicultural applications of positive psychological assessment are also discussed, as is the measurement of contextual variables that may facilitate the development or enhancement of human strength. The variety of perspectives offered will be immensely helpful to readers who wish to incorporate balance into their assessments and research through the integration of theoretically grounded positive measures.

This copy covers both volumesNow in an extensively revised and updated second edition, these essential volumes cover all aspects of child and adolescent assessment. Leading clinical scientists summarize the state of the science of assessment paradigms, instruments, and methods. With an emphasis on practical clinical considerations, chapters also delve into issues related to test development, psychometrics, and bias. Conveniently designed for reference or text use, this vast knowledge base has been synthesized into two volumes which may be purchased separately or together. INTELLIGENCE, APTITUDE, AND ACHIEVEMENT surveys assessment of intelligence, learning styles, and academic achievement; covers historical issues and psychometric methods; and addresses diversity issues, ethical concerns, and special topics in mental testing. PERSONALITY, BEHAVIOR, AND CONTEXT reviews the use of projective methods, interviewing and observation, and objective methods of assessing personality and behavior; discusses the assessment of specific syndromes and symptoms; and presents tools for assessing adaptive skills and the family context. New in the Second EditionBoth volumes in the second edition have been substantially rewritten to include over a decade's worth of conceptual and empirical advances; numerous new and emerging applications; and the latest professional standards. Highlights of INTELLIGENCE, APTITUDE, AND ACHIEVEMENT include new chapters on applications of the KAIT and DAS, the value of multifactored and cross-battery ability assessments, assessment of memory and of writing skills, preschool intellectual assessment, and assessment of children with language impairments or traumaticbrain injury. PERSONALITY, BEHAVIOR, AND CONTEXT features new chapters on classroom observations, structured diagnostic interviewing, ADHD assessment, uses of the BASC and the ASEBA, assessment of childhood anxiety, and more

This volume is sponsored by Division 9 of the American Psychological Association: The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.****This is an essential reference book for any social scientist or student who uses measuresof attitude or personality in his or her research. The earlier version, published twenty years ago, was to be found on the shelf of virtually everyone who worked in the field.Key Features* Serves as an update and extension of a highly useful book published twenty years ago* Employs a systematic standardized evaluation of 150 scales* Chapters on specific types of scales are written by experts in those subfields

EBook Choice Review: Stuart-Hamilton (Univ. of Glamorgan, Wales) has written a dictionary of more than 3,000 entries. Approximately 10 percent are new since the 1995 edition. Coverage of the following topics is idiosyncratic: statistics introduced in undergraduate courses or reported in popular computing packages, psychometrics, research methods, common psychological tests, mental illness and disability, neuroanatomy, and psychotherapy. Italicized cross-references occasionally lead to a series of references, for which the author apologizes. The tone of this slim volume is casual and the language accessible. However, technical definitions--especially statistical ones--suffer from the informality, and are sometimes misleading. British spelling variants and language may render this dictionary inappropriate for US academic libraries. A much better choice is the single-volume APA Dictionary of Psychology (CH, Feb'07, 44-3029), ed. by Gary R. VandenBos. The APA Dictionary (probably a core title for social sciences libraries) seems to include most of the terms in Stuart-Hamilton's dictionary, and offers an appendix of psychological tests. The quality of the APA entries for comparable terms is more consistent, in part because of the large editorial board of experts. Summing Up: Optional. General readers. T. C. Bekhuis Drexel University