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4 - Ethical and Professional Issues in Assessment

from Part I - General Issues in Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2019

By
Linda K. Knauss
Edited by
Martin Sellbom  and
Julie A. Suhr
Martin Sellbom
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
Julie A. Suhr
Affiliation:
Ohio University
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Summary

This chapter addresses the essential ethical and professional considerations when conducting psychological assessments. Testing impacts the life of examinees in a variety of ways from licensing examinations and screening for certain professions to custody evaluations and competency to be executed. Ethical practice in the area of assessment reflects good clinical practice. Topics include informed consent, confidentiality, the involvement of third parties in assessment, external consequences, test construction, test revisions, obsolete tests and outdated test results, cultural competence, test data and test security, assessment in the digital age, as well as the less frequently addressed topic of report writing and providing assessment feedback. A good ethical decision-making framework as well as the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA 2017a) and the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA et. al. 2014) provide guidance on preventing ethical issues from becoming ethical challenges both currently and as new ethical issues in assessment continue to emerge.

Keywords

ethicsprofessional issuesassessmenttest data and test securityassessment and the Internettest revisionsinformed consentconfidentialityobsolete testsfeedback
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis , pp. 38 - 48
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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