Assessment

Psychological assessment refers to the systematic measurement of psychological entities or constructs. The ability to assess psychological constructs in reliable, valid, and useful ways is fundamental to the task of studying psychological processes scientifically. Unless one can be confident that variation among people in scores on a measure reflects variation among those people on the psychological construct of interest, it is not possible to study psychological constructs and relationships between them. One cannot assume that scores on a measure reflect the intended construct just because the items look like they assess that construct. Rather, it is necessary that measures meet a series of standards for their use. Importantly, the challenge for both scientists and practitioners is to choose psychological assessments grounded in established theory with ...