PLQ

PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT WRITING

Psychological Report
- An abstract of a sample of behavior of a patient/client derived from the results of psychological tests
- Vary brief sample of one’s behavior
- Starts with a referral source
- Psychological testing referral: ​Made when a specific problem appears in a person’s behavior
- Such ​behavior/experimental symptoms​ call attention (that something disturbing has happened and a personality conflict/disorder has
appeared)
- Behavioral difficulty (person displays)​: Usually the point at which a psychologist may be called upon to utilize psychodiagnostic
expertise to ​CLARIFY ​and ​LOCALIZE​ the underlying cause of problem
- Final report must be written:​ Understandable to the person reading it
- Problem of patient may be critical and referral person helping with the problem must be able to utilize the psychologist’s input
- Psychologist responsible (for testing and report):​ Must always respond to the needs of the patient and needs of the particular referral
source
- Psychological test report: ​Communication; must be written in way (corresponds to reader’s level of understanding and training)
- Report must meet the criteria: ​Clarity, Meaningfulness and Synthesis
Clarity of the Report Meaningfulness of the Report Synthesis of the Report

- Written in ​Specific language
- Coherent​ and ​free of statements
(uncommunicative bec too general)
- Data presented (to be presented) can be
extensive and elaborate, students and
professionals: may be ​overwhelmed​ with
the task of clarifying & ordering materials
- Reliance on style ​(not facilitate clearly
communicated ideas)
- Clarity: ​Requires understanding and
appreciation of reader’s concerns,
transformed into presentation of report
- Writer:​ Present digestible materials
- Meaningful if:​ Reader finds that it is clear
and understand it
- Understanding:​ Occurs when level of
discourse and use of language is based upon
the level that the particular referer can utilize
- Goal:​ Always to ​transform
mystery/confusion​ into meaningfulness
- Words​ and​ ideas​ must be clear at whatever
level the report is written
- Use of ​jargon​ and ​generalization​: ​Handicaps
to clarifying ideas
- Essential: ​To keep a sharp focus on the
subject’s specific problem
- Relevant synthesis/Integration:​ Initial
behavior/experiential problem of the
patient has been ​given a context ​that
serves as a ​sort of map ​(relevant details
of the problem can be​ made visible​ and
related​ to each other)
- Fundamental details (revealed during
testing and interview):​ Encapsulated into
large concepts
- Then organized in relation to one
another
- This integration demonstrates a
presenting problem (only part of larger
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(shorter sentences)
- Raw data: ​Reflects a complex and
mysterious world
- Test report turns mystery of data and
symptoms into a recognizable form ​(clear
statements)
- Logical progression of ideas: ​Instrumental,
meaningful communication between tester
and referrer
- Important to remember: Dealing with real
people whose problems need to be
meaningfully understood
- Detailing the exact factors​ involved in the
person’s functioning
- Portrait has clear meaning will be developed
- Uniqueness of the person being tested
emerges in the synthesis of the report
system) includes​ all aspects and levels of
personality (not immediately evident)
- Understood only from presenting
symptoms
- Reveals ​meaning of the presenting
symptoms​ and provides information
(guidelines) in the ​management and
treatment ​of the ​overall problem
- Report: ​COMMUNICATION​ about ​logic of
a specific personality
- Aspects of personality are logically
related
- Structure of the report must form
relevant synthesis
- Parts of the report will ​reflect different
aspects​ of the S​ AME PERSONALITY

Why a Psychological Report may be requested?

- Referral to a psychologist for psychodiagnostic testing
- Represents a profound moment in the process of help
- Referral becomes a pivotal event in the life of the person who displays symptoms (intimately related to the person)

Context of Referral
- Reason for referral: ​Symptomatic behavior that the subject displays
- May be acting out behavior (school, home, job)
- Bizarre behavior/behavior reflecting anxiety conditions
- Problematic behavior may be causing personal difficulty or its effects may be disturbing a larger system (classroom, workplace, family)
- Focus: nature and extent of the tension that is involved in the symptom
- Psychological report requested: Relevant info can be marshaled. This info leads to the implementation of therapeutic helping
procedures of further diagnostics measures
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General Guidelines in Psychological Report Writing
Style
- “Flavor” ​of a report
- Influenced by training and orientation of psychologist
- “Professional style”​ is the most important style (Ownby
1987)
- Characterized by ​short words​ (Commons usage and precise
meanings)
- Paragraph: ​Short and focus on single concept
- Similar concepts: ​Located close to one another in the report
- Result:​ Report that combines ​accuracy, clarity, integration
and​ readability
Deciding what to include
- General Purpose: Provide information that will be ​MOST
HELPFUL ​in meeting the needs of the client
- Clinician must strike a ​balance​ between ​providing too much
information and providing too little
- General rule: ​Information should only be included if it ​SERVES
TO INCREASE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CLIENT
- Basic guidelines for deciding what to include relate to: Needs
of the referral setting, background of the readers, purpose of
testing, relative usefulness of the info and whether the info
describes unique characteristics of a person
- After general guidelines have been taken into account, the
next step: Focus on and organize the info derived from the
tests
- General rule: ​Focus on the ​client’s unique method ​of
Terminology
- Use of ​technical/non-technical language
- Technical:​ might be urged; precise and economical, increase
the credibility of writer and communicate concepts that are
impossible to convey (through non-tech lang)
- Problems:​ Varying backgrounds and levels of person reading
the report/readers who have the proper background to
understand technical terms
- Many prefer: ​More straightforward presentation
- Technical terms:​ Danger of becoming nominalists(Merely
naming the phenomenon (person develop an illusory sense of
understanding more than is actually the case)
Content overload
- No specific rules​ to follow in determining how much info to
include in a report
- General guideline: ​Estimate h ​ ow much information​ a reader
can realistically be ​expected to assimilate
- If ​too many details are given​, information may begin to
become poorly defined and vague
- Therefore,​ lack impact of usefulness
- Focus on and discuss only: ​Areas that are ​MOST RELEVANT​ to
the ​purpose of the report
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psychological functioning
- Reader is not concerned so much HOW THE CLIENT IS
SIMILAR to average person as in ​WHAT WAYS HE/SHE IS
DIFFERENT
- Common error: ​Inclusion of generalized statements (so
vague) that they could apply to the ​majority of the
population

Feedback

- During earlier days of psychological assessment, examiners often ​kept psychological assessments carefully concealed​ from the client
- Underlying belief were ​TOO COMPLEX ​and ​MYSTERIOUS​ for the client to​ adequately understand
- Current practices provide client: Clear, direct​ and ​accurate feedback ​regarding the results of an evaluation
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Levels of Interpretation
LEVEL I
- Minimal amount of any sort of
interpretation
- Minimal concern with intervening
processes
- Data are primarily about treated
(Sampling/Correlate way) ; NEVER as
“SIGNS”
- No concern with underlying
constructs (to explain why ​“input”
and ​“output”​ events are related
- Found in ​large-scale selection testing
- Given a validated aptitude test and
jobs offered to those above critical
score and denied those who fall
below it
- For ​psychometric approaches
- Little or no skilled clinical data
collection/interpretation is needed
LEVEL II
- Clinician can deductively arrive at
decisions as to the further needs and
treatment of patients
2 Kinds of Interpretation:
1. Descriptive Generalizations
- Generalize to more inclusive
(still largely behavioral and
descriptive categories)
- Observe instances: Slow
bodily movements and
excessive delays in answering
questions
- From this infer that the
patient is “retarded
motorically”
- “Depressed”: constant sense
of futility and
discouragement
2. Hypothetical Construct: ​The
assumption of an inner state which
goes logically beyond the description
of visible behavior
- Causal conditions, related
personality traits and
behaviors
- Allow prediction of future
events
- Movement from description
to construction
LEVEL III
- Goal: Develop a coherent and
inclusive theory of the individual life
(person situation) or ​“working
image”​ of patient
- General theoretical orientation:
Clinician attempts a full-scale
exploration of the ​individual’s
personality, psychosocial situation
and ​developmental history
- Various facts of the individual which
were earlier described in the outline
of case study
- At the fullest: ​Output would be a
psycho-biography ​of a sort
- Make clear what the patient is, how
he came to be, how he might act
under specific conditions and how he
might change (available clinical
interventions)
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- (sense of clinical
interventions)
Sources of Error in Psychological Interpretation
Information-overload
- Too much materia​l, Clinician o​ verwhelmed
- Clinical judges use less information than is available to them
- Need: Gather optimal ​(rather proximal) amount of
information
- Familiarity with tests involved, type of patient, referral
questions like figure in deciding how much of what kind of
material is collected & how extensible it can be interpreted
- Too much info= can ​get confused
Insufficient Internal Evident for Interpretation
- Interpretations should emerge as evidence converges from
many sources
- Different responses and score of the same tests, responses of
different tests, self-report, observations
- Particularly for​ interpretations at higher levels, supportive
evidence​ is REQUIRED
- Results from ​lack of tests, lack of responses
- Information ​between YOU and the CLIENT
Overinterpretation
- “Wild Analysis”
- Temptation to overinterpret, pursuit of a ​dramatic or
encompassing formulation
- Deep interpretations, seeking for unconscious motives and
nuclear conflicts or those which attempt genetic
reconstruction of the personality (made cautiously and only
on the basis of convincing evidence)
- Interpreting symbols:​ ​Fixed meanings​ (cheap and inaccurate
attempt at psychoanalytic interpretation)
- Indicate relationship between the ​interrupted hypothetical
variable​ and​ referents to overt behavior
Insufficient External Verification of Interpretation
- Interpret assessment material and report on the patients
without further checking on the ​ACCURACY of their
STATEMENTS
- Information​ between YOU and the RELEVANT OTHERS
- Verify statements made by​ patients
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Lack of Individualization Lack of Integration

- Perfectly possible to make correct statements which are
ENTIRELY WORTHLESS
- This is because they could ​apply to ANYONE under MOST
CONDITIONS
- “Aunt Fanny Syndrome”/ “PT Barnum Effect”
- What makes the ​person unique
- Both patients are anxious; how does one patient manifest his
anxiety
- Human personality is organized and integrated
- Usually ​HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM
- Central importance: ​Understand which facts of the
personality are​ most central​ and which are​ peripheral
- Needs subserve others and how defensive, coping and ego
functions are organized (understanding personality is
achieved)
- Over-cautiousness, insufficient knowledge/lack of a
theoretical framework revealed in contradictory
interpretations made side by side
- Someone CANNOT be called BOTH DOMINEERING and
SUBMISSIVE

Overpathologizing Over-psychologizing

- Always highlights: NEGATIVE not the positive aspect of
behavior
- Emphasizes: WEAKNESS rather strengths of a person
- Goal: ​BALANCE​ between the positive and negative
- Recommended approach: Sandwich method
(Positive-Negative-Positive)
- Giving of ​interpretation​ where there is ​none
- Scratching of hand, anxious, itchy
- Avoid​ GENERALIZED INTERPRETATIONS of OVERT
BEHAVIORS
- Must probe into the meaning/motivations behind observed
behaviors
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Schematization

- All humans have a ​LIMITED CAPACITY TO PROCESS INFORMATION​ and to ​FORM CONCEPTS
- Result: ​Individual ​schematized and simplified​ (catering to one/few salient and dramatic and pathological characteristics)
- Resulting interpretations: ​Too organized and consistent and person emerges as ​2-dimensional creature
- Tolerate complexity and deal at one one time with more data than he can comfortably handle

What a Psychological Report Consider/Include:

Industrial Clinical

a. Identifying infromation a. Personal information

b. Test results b. Referral question
c. Skills and abilities c. Case history
d. Personality profile d. Test administered
e. Summary/ Recommendations e. Behavioral observation
f. Test results and interpretation
g. Summary formulation
h. Diagnostic interpretation
i. Recommendation

Principles of value in writing an individualized psychological report

a. Avoid mentioning genral characteristics
b. Describe particular attributes of individual fully (distinctive words as possible)
c. Simple listing of characteristics is not helpful; tell how they are related and organized in the personality
d. Information should be organized developmentally (respect to timeline of individual)
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e. Problems of poor reports: Vague generalization, overqualification, clinging to the immediate data, stating the obvious and describing
stereotypes
f. Validate statements with actual behavioral responses
g. Avoid, use of qualities such as “it appears”, “tends to”; uncertainties
h. Avoid using technical terms. Present them in layman’s language

The Barnum Effect

- Meehl credited D.G.. Patterson with having first used the Barnum effect
- Aung Fanny effect
- Tallent (1958) originated this term when he deplored the generality and vagueness that plagued too many psychological reports
- Example: finding that an assessee had “unconscious hostile urges”, Tallent wrote “so has my Aunt Fanny!”
- Meehl: “To stigmatize those pseudo-successful clinical procedures in which personality descriptions form tests are made to fit the
patient largely or wholly by virtue of their triviality”
- Cognizance of this effect and the factors that may heighten or diminish it is necessary if psychological assessors are to avoid making
interpretations in the manner of P.T. Barnum