Encyclopedia of Psychological Assessment

by: Rocı´o Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros

Psychological assessment is the discipline of scientific psychology devoted to the study of a given human
subject (or group of subjects) in a specific applied field (clinical, educational, work, etc.), by means of
scientific tools (tests and other measurement instruments), with the purpose of answering clients’ demands
that require scientific operations such as describing, diagnosing, predicting, explaining or changing
the behaviour of that subject (Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros et al., 2001). Therefore, from this perspective,
psychological assessment cannot be reduced to any of its applied fields (it has sometimes been reduced to
the clinical field: e.g. Meyer et al., 2001; Ferna´ ndez-Ballesteros, 2002) or to specific scientific tools (it has
been reduced to psychological testing: e.g. Anastasi, 1988) or to a scientific operation (in the past it was
usually reduced to diagnosis and prediction).
Psychological assessment is one of the key disciplines of psychology, being an ever-present applied task
in the activity of any psychologist (Bomholt, 1996; Greenberg, Smith & Muenzen, 1995). Researchers and
professionals of all kinds (in the clinical, work, educational, etc., fields) are faced with the task of
assessing, in one way or another, relevant variables in the particular individual or group of individuals
that constitute the object of study. Whether this assessment is made by means of sophisticated equipment
in the laboratory, through psychological tests, or through non-structured interviews and other qualitative
techniques, the same condition applies: any type of psychological assessment device requires
methodological evaluation and scientific guarantees.