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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Groth-Marnat, Gary, author. | Wright, A. Jordan, author.
Title: Handbook of psychological assessment / Gary Groth-Marnat and A. Jordan Wright.
Description: Sixth edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016 | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015042889 (print) | LCCN 2016000499 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118960646 (cloth) | ISBN 9781118960684 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118960653 (epub)
Thank you so much for your support in buying and reading this book. Our intention has been to create a resource that will cover the A to Z of assessment. In other words, our aim has been to provide guidance that includes larger issues on assessment as well as specific stages in the assessment process, from clarifying the referral question through writing up the report and providing feedback and consulting with your referral sources and clients. We hope it brings clarity, practical guidelines, insights, and useful strategies to your work. Feedback on the previous editions assures us that this is often the case. This fact makes it worth the many long hours hidden away inside a small room incubating ideas and reading, writing, revising, and editing.
As with the previous editions, we have tried to integrate the best of science with the best of practice. Necessarily, psychological assessment involves technical knowledge. But in presenting this technical knowledge, we have tried to isolate, extract, and summarize in as clear a manner as possible the core information that is required for practitioners to function competently. At the same time, assessment is also about the very human side of understanding, helping, and making decisions about people. We hope we have been able to comfortably blend this technical (science) side with the human. An assessment that does not have at least some heart to it is cold and falls short in understanding the experience of the client. To keep in touch with the practitioner/human side of assessment, we have continually maintained active assessment practices in which we have tried to stay close to and interact with the ongoing personal and professional challenges of practitioners. We hope that within and between the sentences in the book, our active involvement with the world of practice is apparent.
It has been seven years since the previous (fifth) edition was published. During that time, much has changed but much has remained the same. The big tests that professional psychologists use most frequently are somewhat different, and this is reflected in changes to this sixth edition. This includes eliminating the chapter on the California Psychological Inventory and replacing it with the more widely used NEO Personality Inventory—3. While both focus on normal personality traits, the NEO is based on the strongly empirically supported five-factor model of personality. Additionally, this edition has eliminated the chapter on the Thematic Apperception Test. Although its use in clinical practice is unclear (anecdotally it seems still to be relatively widely used), the test itself has suffered from the lack of consensus on a coding and scoring protocol and a subsequent lack of strong, consistent empirical support. In place of this chapter, we have included a chapter on the Personality Assessment Inventory, which has gained both strong empirical support and wide clinical popularity.
In addition to these major changes in tests covered, there are important changes within other chapters. The chapter on the Wechsler Intelligence Scales includes updated information on the newly developed Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition (WISC-V). Additionally, two chapters have been significantly expanded because each test has two alternate forms, both of which currently are in wide use. Specifically, the chapter on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory includes information on both the MMPI-2 and the MMPI-2–Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), and the chapter on the Rorschach includes information on both the Comprehensive System and the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS). For both of these tests, the next 10 or so years may see the field lean toward one or the other form of the tests, but at the moment the field is split, and both versions of both tests are widely used. Finally, we have worked to strengthen the sections on “Use with Diverse Groups,” which reflect the more extensive use of assessment for a wide variety of populations and the importance of competently and sensitively working with diverse populations.
There are also many smaller changes throughout this sixth edition. It has been fully updated with new research in the field. There has also been greater emphasis on making assessment more user friendly and consumer oriented. This is reflected in suggestions for using everyday language in reports, connecting interpretations to actual client behavior, strategies for wording interpretations in a manner likely to enhance client growth, and the importance of collaborating with clients. The treatment planning and clinical decision making chapter has been completely updated, and the psychological report writing chapter has been updated to include current thinking of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Personality Assessment about proficiency in personality assessment. We hope that these changes will provide readers with the best, most current, and most practical of what can be available in assessment.
The development of the Handbook of Psychological Assessment has been a group effort. It started many years ago with ideas and cowriting with Gary Groth-Marnat's colleague Dorothy Morena. We wanted to develop a resource that would assist students with all phases of psychological assessment. Our sincere thanks to her. A series of editors at John Wiley & Sons have been invaluable, including Herb Reich, Jennifer Simon, Tracey Belmont, Lisa Gebo, Peggy Alexander, and Marquita Flemming. We have very much enjoyed and appreciated our relationship with Wiley; not only have we been treated as respected authors, but they have also welcomed us into the Wiley “family.” Colleagues who have provided valuable input include Steve Smith, Larry Beutler, Steve Finn, Alan Kaufman, Dawn Flanagan, Greg Meyer, Joni Mihura, Aasha Foster, and the invaluable and nonstop list of articles from the Kenneth Pope website and listerv. Seth Grossman, C. J. Thompson, and their colleagues at Pearson Assessment were extremely helpful and generous in supplying us with advance information on the MCMI-IV. Finally, much of our professional work is devoted toward helping students to achieve the best of what they are capable of. In return, working with them has inevitably helped us refine this sixth edition. Finally, we would like to dedicate the sixth edition to Gary's parents, Barbara and Rudy, in memoriam, as well as to Jordan's husband, Matt, and daughter, Millie, for their unwavering support.
Gary Groth-Marnat and A. Jordan Wright July 28, 2015
