Prediction (General)

Introduction

If prediction is a statement about an unknown and uncertain event (Ledolter, 1986) then many activities in the domain of psychological assessment can be characterized and discussed from this perspective. Thus, a nosological

classification usually has implications for the values of variables not used for this classification, and leads to expectations of future behaviour of a client. Deciding on an intervention is related to a prediction of success; the selection and use of assessment instruments is equivalent to the choice of predictors.

Assessors rarely face the task to evaluate predictions derived from a well established theory. Usually, to test their assumptions they have to resort to routine statistical prediction procedures like regression and discriminant analysis. Since they quite often cannot refer to a large number of ...