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1. Application No –
713983b5e5311e99bfe05ba7df9b4e0
Name – Rajshree
Banaras Hindu University

2. NATURE
What is Psychodiagnostics?
• Psychodiagnostic is the science or art of making a
personality evaluation.
• The diagnosis of mental disorder.
• Psychodiagnostic testing is used to help diagnose and
clarify concerns regarding behavior, personality
traits, mood, emotional functioning, and cognitive
processes.

3. Aims of Psychodiagnostic Techniques
• Answer diagnostic questions and make decisions
• Ascertain difficulties
• Make predictions about an individual’s behaviour
• Measure cognitive ability, strengths and weaknesses
• Make evaluative judgments about an individual’s state of
functioning
• Take account of an individual’s history, background information,
clinical impressions, observations

4. CONT….
• Take considerations of individual characteristics, such as
age, physical/mental limitations, education level, culture
and language, medical conditions
• Have application to treatment interventions, to optimize
outcomes and provide relief from psychological difficulties
• Have application to forensic evaluations
• Determine diagnoses based on the Diagnostic Statistical
Manual (5th edition)
• Make recommendations about alternative
approaches/treatments available to the individual

5. Types
Intelligence testing
The Binet and Wechsler's scales
Projective techniques
The Rorschach
The Holtzman - Ink - Blot Test
TAT
The Children's Apperception test
The make a picture story test
Sentence completion method.
Projective drawing.

6. Cont…..
Personality assessment
MMPI
EPQ
Neo - PI- R
CPI
The 16 PF Questionnaire
Behavioral assessment
Neuropsychological assessment
Halstead - Reitan Neuropsychological Battery
Luria - Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery
Bender - Visual - Motor Gestalt test

7. Scopes
• Patients whom you suspect have substance abuse
problems
• Patients with possible learning disabilities
• Patients with suspected mental retardation or
poor intellectual functioning
• Patients with mood disorders
• Patients with anxiety and panic disorders
• Patients who have experienced trauma
• Children and adolescents who are "acting-out"
• Patients with suspected personality disorders

8. Process of Clinical
Assessment/Psychodiagnosis
• Planning for assessment
• Collection of assessment data
• Processing assessment data
• Communicating assessment data

9. 1. Planning for Assessment
• Psychological assessment starts with a referral
question.
• A primary-care physician, a school system, the
court, or a parent might refer someone to a
psychologist for assessment to know
something about an individual/client.

10. 1. Planning for Assessment
• Somatic Level- blood group, autonomic response
pattern, heart rate, kidney & liver function, etc.
• Physical Level- height, weight, sex, etc.
• Demographic Level- name, age, address,
education, occupation, etc.
• Overt Behavioral Level- eye-hand coordination,
reading ability, communication skills, etc.
• Cognitive/Intellectual Level- records from
performance on intelligence test
• Emotional/Affective Level- information from
emotional intelligence tests are collected
• Environmental Level- family environment, job
requirement, subcultural standards, etc.

11. 2. Collection of Assessment Data
• Acc. to McReynolds (1975) there are four
sources from which we collect data.
I. Interviews
II. Tests
III. Observations
IV. Life Records

12. 3. Processing Assessment Data
• It’s also called data processing or clinical
inference or clinical judgment.
• It has three goals-
I. Classification- disorder of the client is classified
and categorized.
II. Description- describe the symptoms and causes
of disorder.
III. Prediction- to predict which therapy is useful for
client. Prediction about a person’s future
behavior.

13. Cont..
• Wiggins (1973) provide three ways of viewing
psychological assessment data for interpretation of
human behavior.
• Sign- in this sign approach, human behavior is viewed
as a sign of some underlying characteristic. For e.g.,
psychodynamic psychologists view responses to
psychological tests as signs of underlying personality
traits. And in the medical model, assessment data is
examined for evidence of underlying disease states or
mental illness.
• It involves a considerable level of inference on the
clinician’s part.

14. Cont…
• Sample- This view is associated with the
behavioral perspective. No underlying causes are
inferred.
• Client’s responses to psychological tests, or
observed behavior, or what client report about
their behavior, are viewed simply as samples of
the ways in which the client behaves in various
contexts.
• Viewing assessment finding as samples requires
very little inference.

15. • Correlates- viewing data as correlates involves
midlevel of inference between signs (high
inference) and samples (low inference).
• Inference made about the individual are based
upon the known correlates of the observed
behavior.
• For e.g., If a psychologist is told that person A
took an overdose of Tylenol and was rushed to
the emergency room for treatment, the
psychologist might infer that the individual is a
women in her 20s who is moderately depressed
and has felt little emotional support from
significant others. These inferences are based
upon what is known about individuals who
attempt suicide by overdose.

16. 4. Communicating Assessment Data
• It is called Psychological Report or Assessment
Report
• It has three characteristics-
I. Clarity of reports- not be ambiguous and dual
meaning.
II. Relevance to goals- emphasis on goals like
classification, description and prediction of
behavior.
III. Usefulness of reports- some new facts about
the behavior of client included which we don’t
know earlier.

17. • Jerome Sattler (1998) offered the following
recommendations to improve clarity in reports.
i. Include in the report relevant material and delete
potentially damaging material.
ii. Avoid undue generalizations- Conclusions and
generalizations about a client should be supported by the
assessment findings.
iii. Use behavioral referents to enhance the report’s
readability- Providing examples that illustrate the points
the psychologist is making about the client can make the
report more interesting to read.
iv. Communicate clearly and eliminate unnecessary technical
material- Ambiguous phrases such as “quite a few”, “very
often”, should be avoided.
v. Eliminate biased terms from reports- Language that
implies that the psychologist is biased toward one group
or another should not appear in a psychological report.

18. Organization of the Report
The report will have headings like-
• Identifying Information- it includes name, age, sex,
and race or ethnic background of the client as well as
any other relevant identifying information.
• Reason for Referral- it includes name of the referral
source, the specific questions the referral source would
like addressed, and a summary of specific behaviors or
symptoms that led to the referral.
• Background Information- relevant history is described.
It includes family of origin, education, employment,
sexual, material, medical, legal, mental health, and
substance abuse.

19. • Behavioral Observations- in this section the psychologist paints a
picture of the client in the evaluation. The goal is to describe the
person in the context of the evaluation so that the reader has a
sense of what it was like to be with the client during the
assessment. The following might be included-
• Physical appearance including dress & distinguishing features (e.g.,
scars, tattoos, facial hair)
• Attitude toward the evaluation (e.g., “friendly & cooperative,”
“distant & reserved”)
• Speech pattern (e.g., rapid, deliberate, mumbles)
• Activity level (e.g., fidgety, relaxed)
• Unusual mannerisms or odd behaviors
• Responses to testing materials (e.g., reactions to successes &
failures)

20. • Assessment Results & Interpretation- here the major
findings are described. This section might be organized in
several ways.
• Ownby (1992) describes three models for report findings-
i. Hypothesis-oriented model- the psychologist describes
the assessment findings relevant to each referral
question.
ii. Domain-oriented model- the psychologist organizes
findings around different domains of functioning such as
intellectual, academic achievement, personality and
psychopathology. This approach has the advantage of
being comprehensive & providing information on both
the strengths & weaknesses of the client.
iii. Test-oriented model- here findings are organized around
the tests administered. While this approach makes it clear
where the findings come from, it does not have many
other advantages.

21. • Summary & Recommendations- It’s a final
section of the report. The psychologist
summarizes and integrates the findings.
• No new material included here. Rather, the
most important conclusions are spelled out
briefly and clearly.
• Recommendations based upon the
assessment findings are usually saved until the
end of the report.

22. Stages of Clinical
Assessment/Psychodiagnosis
• Acc. to Sundberg & Tyler (1962) there are four stages
of psychodiagnosis-
I. Stage of Preparation- all the relevant information
related to problem of client are collected in this
stage. Based on referral questions some inferences
are made for the disorder of client and decide how to
move further in right direction.
II. Stage of Input- the psychologist collect data about
the client’s problem through interviews, observation
and psychological tests and also find out the
situations in which the symptoms of problem
behavior increased.

23. Cont…
III. Stage of Processing- data collected from
second stage are analyzed and evaluated and
explained by psychologist or psychiatrists.
IV. Stage of Output- in this stage psychologist
make client aware about his present problem
and suggests some clinical actions to come
out from his problem. Psychologist provide
appropriate direction for the treatment of
problematic behavior of client.

24. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
PSYCHOLOGICAL PATIENCE