Wright (2011). The hypothesis testing model.

Psychological assessment can provide a catalog of an individual’s cognitive, emotional and psychological strengths, weaknesses, deficits and resources. It can also provide dynamic insights into the inner workings of an individual with invaluable information for diagnosis, potential intervention and prognosis. The goal of psychological assessment is determining what will be most valuable to the individual being assessed.

Psychological assessment consists of six steps:

1. Conducting a clinical interview
2. Choosing a battery of tests
3. Administering, scoring and interpreting tests
4. Integrating and conceptualizing information gathered from test results, the clinical interview, behavioural observations and other sources
5. Writing a psychological assessment report
6. Providing feedback to the individual assessed and/or the referral source

Psychological assessment only provides a picture of how a person is currently functioning and this cannot be projected on the future with 100% accuracy. The hypothesis testing model contains several steps:

1. Clinical assessment
   This step involves conducting a clinical interview and formulating hypotheses based on the interview and background information. The goals of this step are assessing impairment in functioning (1) and generating hypotheses (2).
2. Selecting tests
   This step involves selecting tests based on an established set of criteria. Multiple measures of the same constructs should be included (i.e. multiple tests for the same hypothesis).
3. Testing
   This step involves administering and scoring tests. The administering and scoring of tests need to be done with great care as it can greatly skew interpretations.
4. Integration of all data
   This step involves combining test results and behavioural observations with clinical assessment data to address each of the hypotheses.
5. Writing the assessment report
   This step involves writing the assessment report which needs to be professional, while not too difficult to understand.
6. Providing feedback
   This step involves providing feedback to the client which is both professional and understandable. This step requires the person providing the feedback being flexible in the way it is provided.

Clinical assessment refers to the combination of the information gathered from the clinical interview and other sources of report.