All ethical issues regarding assessment in psychology

1. Ethics in Assessment
Sumaira Ayub

2. Bases for Assessments
(a) Psychologists base the opinions contained in their
recommendations, reports, and diagnostic or
evaluative statements, including forensic testimony,
on information and techniques sufficient to
substantiate their findings.
(b) psychologists provide opinions of the psychological
characteristics of individuals only after they have
conducted an examination of the individuals
adequate to support their statements or conclusions.

3. (c) When psychologists conduct a record review or
provide consultation or supervision and an individual
examination is not warranted or necessary for the
opinion, psychologists explain this and the sources of
information on which they based their conclusions and
recommendations.

4. Use of Assessments
(a) Psychologists administer, adapt, score, interpret, or use
assessment techniques, interviews, tests, or instruments in
a manner and for purposes that are appropriate in light of
the research on or evidence of the usefulness and proper
application of the techniques.
(b) Psychologists use assessment instruments whose
validity and reliability have been established for use with
members of the population tested. When such validity or
reliability has not been established, psychologists describe
the strengths and limitations of test results and
interpretation.

5. (c) Psychologists use assessment methods that are
appropriate to an individual’s language preference and
competence, unless the use of an alternative language is
relevant to the assessment issues.

6. In terms of standardization samples, some tests are
designed only for use with literate, English-speaking
adults. Others may focus on children under the age of 7
or individuals with advanced typing skills. Without
specific knowledge of the intended subject population
or group used to establish norms, test scores become
meaningless.

7. TEST ADEQUACY
• “good test” or a “bad test”
• A test characterized as reliable, valid, and useful for
one purpose may prove useless or inappropriate for
another.
• Select each instrument or technique with an
understanding of its strengths and limitations with
respect to the referral questions you hope to answer.
• An instrument adequate for its intended use in the
hands of a trained examiner could be subject to
substantial misuse in the hands of less qualified users.

8. Variety of test
• One can classify test instruments across a number of
dimensions, including the purpose for designing
them, the population used to standardize them, the
nature of their administration, the mode of
interpretation, and their psychometric properties.

9. • Personnel selection, promotion, or classification;
professional licensure or certification;
• Educational admission and placement;
• Certification testing in elementary and secondary
schools;
• Ability and achievement testing in schools;
• Special education testing (including instruments
designed for use with the blind, hearing impaired, and
other people with disabilities);

10. • Clinical assessment (including cognitive,
neuropsychological, and personality testing);
• Counseling and guidance (including vocational
interest inventories);
• Specialized instruments designed for program
evaluation and programmatic decision making; and
• Research instruments intended to draw inferences
about the true or absolute standing of a group or
individual on some hypothetical or investigative
psychological dimension.

11. Test Construction
When developing a test or assessment technique,
prepare a manual that provides all relevant instructions
for administration and scoring, as well as the
psychometric foundations (e.g., sample, norms,
reliability, and validity data).
“Psychologists who develop tests and other assessment
techniques use appropriate psychometric procedures
and current scientific or professional knowledge for test
design, standardization, validation, reduction or
elimination of bias, and recommendations for use.”

12. The Test Manual
Each psychological assessment instrument should have a
test manual that contains detailed information for
potential users, including the following:
– the development and purpose of the test,
– information on the standard administration conditions and
scoring,
– data on the sample population used to standardize the test,
– information on its reliability and measurement error,
– documentation of its validation, and
– any other information needed to enable a qualified user or
reviewer to evaluate its appropriateness and adequacy for
its intended use.

13. • The manual may have supplemental sections
addressing particular issues or audiences (e.g., a
technical measurement section or a section written in
lay terms to help test takers understand the meaning
of their scores).
• The manual must include sufficient detail to permit
the user to determine the test’s appropriateness for a
specific population and assessment goal.

14. • The manual should also include references for all
relevant published research on the instrument.
• Publication or distribution of a test without making
such documentation available would constitute an
ethical breach, as doing so omits critical information,
violates accepted professional standards, and invites
misuse.

15. Test Administration
• This implies a specific test ecology, adherence to
administration rules, and specific scoring criteria.
• Test administration may occur in large groups of test
takers or individually, with one examiner assessing
one client. The format may employ timed or untimed
items; involve paper-and-pencil, oral, or computer-
based administration using a range of desktop and
handheld platforms; and require forced-choice or
open-ended responses.

16. • Some tests require a skilled administrator, whereas
others use self-administration methods using an
electronic device or monitored by a person without
psychological training. Many tests are administered,
scored, and partially interpreted solely based on the
client’s interaction with an electronic interface.
• Some tests may be administered, scored, and
interpreted quite simply by mechanical means or a
person with little or no formal training (e.g., tests of
typing speed and accuracy).

17. • Other tests may not require skilled administrators but
demand sophisticated clinical training for proper
interpretation (e.g., personality inventories or
achievement tests).
• Still other tests may require high levels of skill,
scientific knowledge, and detailed understanding of
complex scoring systems for proper administration and
interpretation (e.g., neuropsychological assessment
instruments or projective personality assessment
techniques such as the Rorschach inkblots).

18. Test Bias
• Bias may manifest itself as a function of the skill or trait
being tested, as a statistical phenomenon, as a selection
model, as test content problems, as an over interpretation
issue, as in the use of wrong criteria, or even as test
atmosphere or test ecology issues.
• The importance of both linguistic and cultural sensitivity
in testing is critical.
• In selecting for employment or promotion, for example,
how can we best meet current employer needs while
compensating for past wrongs and current individual
rights? What role should selective admissions play in
higher education, and how should broad opportunities be
provided? What form should education for children with
disabilities take? How should we deal with people for
whom English is not a native language?

19. User Competence
• Appropriate utilization of psychological tests involves
much more than simply recording responses and
totaling the score (Rey-Casserly & Koocher, 2012).
Moreland and his colleagues (1995) described 86 test
user competencies and 7 factors accounting for most
test misuse. Examples of the 86 competencies include
the following:

20. • Avoiding errors in scoring
• Keeping scoring keys and test materials secure
• Making certain that examinees follow directions
• Refraining from coaching or training individuals on
test items
• Establishing rapport with examinees to obtain
accurate scores
• Using settings and conditions that allow for optimum
test performance

21. • The seven most common misuse factors noted by
Moreland and his colleagues were
– Lack of a comprehensive assessment,
– Improper test use,
– Lack of psychometric knowledge.
– Failure to maintain integrity of test results,
– Inaccurate scoring,
– Inappropriate use of norms, and
– Inadequate interpretive feedback.
APA Standards

22. 9.07 Assessment by Unqualified Persons
• Psychologists do not promote the use of
psychological assessment techniques by
unqualified persons, except when such use is
conducted for training purposes with
appropriate supervision.

23. USE OF TEST RESULTS
• Problems of Consent
• Clients should be informed in understandable terms of the
purpose and intended use of the tests and test data.
• Consent implies three separate aspects:
– knowledge
– Voluntariness and
– Capacity
• The person seeking the consent must disclose sufficient
information for the person granting consent to understand
fully what is being asked. It is not necessary to disclose
every potential aspect of the situation, only those facts a
reasonable person might need to formulate a decision.

24. • Voluntariness refers to the absence of coercion,
duress, misrepresentation, or undue inducement.
• Capacity refers to legal competence to give
consent.
Although all adults are deemed competent to grant
consent unless they are found to be incompetent in a
court proceeding, children are presumed to be
incompetent to grant consent under the law.

25. • Obsolete Scores
• Mental health professionals cannot ethically base
their assessments, intervention decisions, or
recommendations on outdated data or test results.
• We also do not base decisions or recommendations on
obsolete tests and measures not useful for the current
purpose.

26. 9.08 Obsolete Tests and Outdated Test Results
(a) Psychologists do not base their assessment or
intervention decisions or recommendations on data or
test results that are outdated for the current purpose.
(b) Psychologists do not base such decisions or
recommendations on tests and measures that are
obsolete and not useful for the current purpose.

27. • The good news: Most of the psychologists responding
seemed to manage their testing practices in keeping
with established ethical principles. They also seemed
willing to give appropriate feedback on test results to
clients.
• The bad news: Few of those surveyed had taken any
steps to deal with the problem of obsolete data. The
results also suggested that 76% expressed a
willingness to release old test information to agencies
with the consent of the client. This implied little
recognition that such old records could be inaccurate
or harmful.

28. • It is difficult to formulate firm rules regarding when a
given set of data is no longer useful; however, the
APA Record Keeping Guidelines (APA, 2007) offer
general guidance.
• Broad test scores used for initial employment
screening have little usefulness if more detailed
evaluation follows and are certainly of no value after
a year or more of employment.

29. • Likewise, college placement test scores have little
value after the college course work is completed.
Retention of such data (particularly low scores) could
have a long-term stigmatizing effect on test-takers. It
is certainly possible to code data for use in long-term
archival research, when indicated, while removing all
traces of the same data from individual files.

30. 9.06 Interpreting Assessment Results
• When interpreting assessment results, including
automated interpretations, psychologists take into
account the purpose of the assessment as well as the
various test factors, test-taking abilities, and other
characteristics of the person being assessed, such as
situational, personal, linguistic, and cultural
differences, that might affect psychologists’
judgments or reduce the accuracy of their
interpretations. They indicate any significant
limitations of their interpretations.

31. Access to Test Data
• Fairly uniform agreement among professionals holds that
clients have the right of access to information about
themselves and that parents have similar access to
information about their minor children.
• The specific nature of the information, however, has
sometimes been raised as a question. The test scores
themselves may well prove meaningless or be
misinterpreted by a layperson. One way of handling this
is to frame reports in plain language, keeping in mind that
the reports are likely to be read by the people about whom
they are written. Likewise, those who work with children
must frame their reports with the parents’ right of access
in mind.

32. • Do consider the test data (APA: 9.04) as medical
records, accessible to the client (or parents of a child
client)
“(b) In the absence of a client/patient release,
psychologists provide test data only as required by law
or court order.”

33. Mental health practitioners who conduct assessments of
individuals involved in litigation must expect that they
will have to provide raw data (i.e., scores, observations,
and client responses to test stimuli) to non-experts in
response to court orders or releases signed by the client.
Records should be kept with the understanding that they
may ultimately be released to the client or to a court.