Integrative Assessment

Book excerpt: For helping professional practitioners and students in training, and those preparing for licensure Using a case study approach--in a practitioner's voice--this practical guide helps beginning and future counselors understand and use various effective assessment methods, from interviewing and observing to tests and counselor- and client-friendly standardized measures. Here is valuable assessment information and guidance which emerging helping professionals can apply to various mental health, school, community, and organizational settings. Using a case study approach and written in a practitioner's voice, the book includes a variety of topics not found, or minimally covered in current counseling assessment textbooks: the risks and resources approach to assessment, interviewing principles and methods, exploring presenting problems and readiness for change, informal and formal observations, assessing the therapeutic alliance; standardized risk assessments, dangerousness to self and others, and assessing substance use. Based on the premise that assessment is an on-going information gathering process that relies on multiple methods and sources for making decisions or answering a question, this guide takes a balanced, comprehensive approach that looks at much more than the traditional coverage of assessment alone. Three chapters detail the most commonly used assessment methods--interviewing and observing--and the author describes the traditional tests and measurement concepts of reliability and validity. Also unique to this guide are its detailed descriptions of, and applications for, standardized measures which readers can use immediately to administer, score, and interpret.