PSYX 340 Psychological Disorders · Unit 1: Foundations, anxiety and trauma · on Exam 1
1.3 Assessment, diagnosis and treatment
Study notes for Assessment, diagnosis and treatment in PSYX 340 Psychological Disorders at Montana State University: the big ideas, a worked example, common mistakes and an exam tip. The same topic has endless practice questions and flashcards in StudyCat.
Big ideas
- A good assessment tool is standardized (same procedure and norms for everyone), reliable (consistent: test-retest and interrater reliability) and valid (measures what it claims: predictive, concurrent, content and face validity; face validity alone proves little).
- Tools: clinical interviews (unstructured or structured), projective tests (Rorschach inkblots, the Thematic Apperception Test, sentence completion, drawings; low reliability and validity), personality inventories such as the MMPI (MMPI-2 and MMPI-3, with validity scales), response inventories, psychophysiological tests, neuropsychological tests and intelligence tests.
- Clinical observation can be naturalistic, analog (in an artificial setting) or self-monitoring. Problems include observer drift, observer bias and reactivity (people act differently when watched).
- Diagnosis uses a classification system. In the US that is the DSM-5-TR (2022), which lists criteria, duration and specifiers; many countries use the WHO’s ICD-11. Diagnoses can be categorical (present or absent) or dimensional (rated by severity), and labels can stigmatize, as Rosenhan’s 1973 “pseudopatient” study argued.
- Treatment research asks whether therapy helps: overall, therapy clearly beats no treatment. The rapprochement movement looks for common factors shared by effective therapies, and empirically supported treatments are those tested with controlled trials. Beware the uniformity myth, the idea that all therapists and clients are alike.
Worked example
A new anxiety questionnaire gives a student 42 points on Monday and 18 on Friday with nothing changed in between. It also correlates strongly with a clinician’s later diagnosis in other people. Is it reliable? Valid?
Show the solution
It has poor test-retest reliability: the same person got very different scores without a real change. A test cannot be valid if it is not reliable, so the correlation with later diagnosis (predictive validity) is suspect until reliability is fixed. Reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.
Common mistakes
- Swapping reliability (consistency) and validity (accuracy).
- Thinking a projective test is scored like the MMPI. Projective tests are interpreted and have weak reliability and validity.
- Saying DSM-5-TR explains causes. It describes criteria; it is mostly neutral about causes.
- Forgetting reactivity when asked why self-monitoring or observation can mislead.
Exam tipKnow an example of each reliability and validity type. A favorite question type describes a scenario and asks which kind of reliability or validity is being tested.
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