“It’s the End of the World as We Know It… and I Feel Fine!!!!!”

Wow! What a ride! October 2006 to March 2011! I just can’t believe it’s finally here! No more schoolwork! EVER!!! Ok, now that I’ve got all the expletives out of the way….
Seriously, I spent the whole day being filled with gratitude. Last night I emailed my instructors thanking them personally for how they helped shape my academic experience. Today, I was filled with gratitude for the person that really made this happen for me, my wife. All the weekends sacrificed, the shift in our relationship as we navigated homework, projects, colloquiums, internship and just plain stress. What an experience. I’ve had this life-long dream to become a human services clinician and now my wife has helped me make that come true. What a gift! Well, right now I’m just beside myself in gratitude and anticipation. I do hope my next post a even mildly more profound! Hope all is well, because everything is crazy on this side!!!

Adam T

An Excerpt from Adam’s Notebook, Vol. 18(5)

Personal Reflection

This topic of trauma is rather personal to me in that early after graduating high school; I worked as a clerk in a local trauma center emergency room. Being the only trauma center in a 50 mile radius along the northeast corridor (Interstate 95, DC to New York) makes for a busy center. I would be presented with trauma on a daily basis, everything from farming accidents, automobile accidents, crime, rape and child abuse. Often as a clerk, my job entailed not only witnessing the state of the victim, but talking with the family present to gather information for their chart. My job required me to focus on getting data, not on helping with the emotion. I had to be very clinical. As one would imagine, I also witnessed the immediate effects of death on family members. Sometimes, knowing that a family member had passed before they knew, I had to gather information for their chart. I did this job for nearly 10 years and while I did it well, it took a toll on my skills in empathy and compassion. I became clinical and numb in many parts of my life and while intellectually and logically, I was able to process emotion, I didn’t feel it – this contributed to a number of life changing events (another story). Flash forward to Colloquium 1 in VA, Fall 2008. One week of constant mock group, individual and family therapy where I connect with a group of 12 classmates. I feel empathy for the first time and cry for make believe client! This was new ground for me. I hadn’t done this, before…. Ever! Flash forward to Track II , Summer 2009, another week with a new group of classmates with more intensity than I’ve had in my life. I cried like a baby all week and loved it! I have come to embrace empathy as something precious and only hope I don’t over expose myself in a traumatic crisis.

In reading Figley’s article on compassion fatigue, I am thoughtful about applying these methods in my own career and I am particularly thoughtful about my current stance on empathy. The methods of insight that will likely serve me best seem to be the emphasis on a having open discussions with colleagues and facilitating self care. Currently my work under supervision allows m e the immediate venue on keeping empathy and compassion in check. I discuss any transference with my supervisor and have even approached a client role at times disclosing some personal experience during these sessions. Being thoughtful about maintaining this professionally therapeutic session beyond my internship and licensure period will be important. Becoming over confident in my ability to maintain on my own is not likely a good plan. Also, identifying methods to facilitate self care will be critical in my effort to be an effective therapist. Finding ways to detach from the compassion and empathy long enough to recharge will be my likely initial steps. If further steps are needed seeking a colleague for guidance and objectivity will be a thorough follow-up.

So I’m thoughtful about how I might have helped me 15 years ago, had I worked as a trauma counselor in the hospital during one of the many crises that happened during my tenure there. Using Figley’s process, I might have begun by educating the 25 year old me about my compassion fatigue and working to identify the way it was impacting me and my life. I believe the next step would be to have provided a safe place to begin working on allowing the feelings to be expressed, perhaps with people other than co-workers. With this safe group acting out and processing some of these circumstances in a “controlled” manner would be the goal. Figley comments on this exposure dosage writing, “Utilizing the right therapeutic dosage of exposure is challenging.” (Figley, 2002, p.1439) He further writes that combining these controlled dosages with techniques that help process those such as relaxation can be effective. (Figley, 2002) Facilitating this therapeutic exposure, while helping the participants build a support circle of peers seems to be the most effective approach.

Adam T

References

Figley, C. R. (2002). Compassion Fatigue: Psychotherapists’ Chronic Lack of Self Care[SUP 1]. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(11), 1433-1441. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Going the Distance….

It seemed like this semester would never arrive. Here I am, in my final internship and boy what a ride it’s been. If you think I’ve been absent here on my blog, you should talk to my family. I’m pretty sure they have an APB out for me wondering if I’ve been kidnapped or just fallen of the face of the earth. Honestly, if it weren’t for the Christmas break where I took one week off, I’d be admitted to the loony bin right now.

So, I had all these grand ideas about what my internship might be like and how I would get experience here and there doing all manner of therapeutic venues. Turns out it’s hard enough to setup one internship site and stick with it 30 hours per week. Thankfully, I setup shop at an inpatient facility and I can drum up some serious hours for my internship, but man do I have to give up my life Monday-Friday. This is, without a doubt, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m 27.5 weeks into this 36 week internship and I absolutely can’t wait to get my life back. I have grown fond of my co-workers down here and have developed a healthy rapport with the residents here as well. What a challenge is all I can say. For now, I have no insightful banter to offer, nor to have some analytical discussion to offer up. Much of what I’ve been doing is trying to keep my head above water and get my assignments in on time. So, everyone, I’ll see you in just over 8 weeks and hopefully have something really cool or interesting to share as I close this momentous and exciting chapter of my life! Wish me luck!

Summer Ensues – Welcome back to your life Adam … well soon anyway.

Woo Hoo!  I’m done! … well, nearly done anyway.  Tomorrow I do my last assignment for these two classes and as I come to a close of this segment of my graduate degree I find myself filled with excitement!  I can’t wait to start my clinical and begin learning from real counselors and real clients!  Awesome stuff is about start and I can’t wait; however the thing I truely miss more than anything right now is my family.  Over the past 6 and half years I have taken them on a wild ride as I completed my BA degree and now near completion of MS.  They have experienced with me the time commitment, the life adjusting change and dream filled future but have only done this in my wake.  Occasionally, we enjoy days together here and there, but they are always filled with thoughts of next semester and last semester.  I hope they can hold out for a few more months while I finish my clinical because I can’t wait to meet them at the gate when my plane arrives – I miss them.  C U Soon family! – Love, Dad!

Excerpts from Adam’s Notebook – Vol.14(9)#2

Can you believe that this is nearly the end of my last semester of coursework?! I can’t. Next semester I begin my practicum and my integrative project (thesis), then I jump into my 22 week clinical. I’ll be working at an inpatient drug and alcohol addiction facility in the evenings. So long, sleep! See you in 30 weeks! Thankfully, we’ll be taking a vacation prior to this venture. So, here’s one of my final notebook excerpts that I thought was mildly interesting. Enjoy.

In a relatively recent article by Chinman and Allende, collaborative treatment planning was studied and discussed as a viable method for increasing patient engagement and satisfaction with their treatment. To begin collaborative treatment planning can be described as process in which the client directs the motivation and context of their treatment specifically addressing personal concerns while still incorporating the mental health or medical needs. Consider a visit to a new dentist where, during the intake the client is specifically asked what they would like to improve about their teeth. The client might say anything from problems with bleeding during brushing or they would like to have a more attractive smile. Either way the dentist is able to address the medical issues present in the client’s dental care, but the dentist is able to do this while specifically addressing the needs of the client. The client has defined the context of their care, not the actual care. In this sense the client is clearly more satisfied in that they feel as though their issues were directly addressed as opposed to them being led into a dental chair and had their face numbed and drilled, meanwhile they still don’t like their smile and don’t know how to improve it.
This approach taps into the natural curiosity of the therapist. By being curious about the motivation and context of the client’s therapy, the therapist not only provides a more specific and perhaps more holistic treatment model, they also perpetuate a more engaged and satisfied client.
One focus of the article was comparing the perceived obstacles between the client and the therapist and discussing the implications thereto. Listed below are the top three obstacles as selected by the client and the therapist.

Client
• Lack of time
• Unsure of how to do treatment planning
• Not sure that setting treatment goals would help
Therapist
• Consumer’s disability
• Consumer’s non-compliance
• Consumer’s lack of interest
(Chinman & Allende, 1999, pp.213, 215)
Clearly, not all of these perceptions are aligned and understanding the limitations of the study would be important. One might argue that “Consumer’s lack of interest” and “Not sure that setting treatment goals would help” could be interpreted as meaning the same thing or at least motivated by the same factor. Additionally, one might consider that the participants in this study would not fall into the “Consumer’s non-compliance” and “Consumer’s lack of interest” categories by default of the circumstance of their treatment. Perhaps it was terminated prematurely or they were being treated under duress. Either way, one might argue that they would not be inclined to participate in the study, thereby creating a natural sway of the results. None the less, what cannot be ignored is that those clients that are participating and engaged in their own treatment could be more satisfied with their treatment if they were involved in developing the context. Assuming that all clients are unable, unwilling or uninterested does a disservice to the client, the therapist and the profession as a whole. Moreover, by engaging the client in their own treatment, they may decrease the number of patients that fall into the therapists’ top three perceived obstacles.

Adam T

References

Chinman, M., & Allende, M. (1999). On the Road to Collaborative Treatment Planning: Consumer and Provider Perspectives. Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 26(2), 211. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database

Excerpts from Adam’s Notebook, Vol.17(4)

It’s been a crazy spring since starting back to class. These are my last two classes before my Practicum starts and I’m juggling crazy things right now! So much for rejecting the craziness… I am trying isolate my time better and it helps, but life is still crazy!
So, I had to share this posting because it’s just out there! This is some abstract thinking on my part. I have to re-read it just be sure it makes sense. Dog gone Social Constructionism!

Language is commonly understood to be more than just the words that are spoken by an individual or shared in a conversation. It also includes the non-verbal language such as tone, inflection, emphasis and the numerous ways your body communicates. Social Constructionism takes the understanding of language to another step where language is presented as a subjective knowing of “… their world and in their knowing simultaneously to construct it.” (Becvar & Becvar, 2009, p.91) This is to say that reality and the language we use to communicate that reality exist only as we understand them to exist. That understanding of reality and language is vulnerable to conditions that exist in the various relationships in one’s life. Language is culturally understood through socialization and adopts a shared value and a collective reality that exists only in that culture. (Becvar & Becvar, 2009)
Just as language exists as a cultural construct, the individual or “self” can also be described as such. In Social Constructionism, reality is created through a social understanding as well as a individual interpretation based on that individual’s social existence. As such, the “self” is understood to be based on that same premise where it is interpreted based on individual and collective interpretations. Hoffman describes the “self” as a story and follows up commenting that “…the big deception is the biological package…” (Hoffman, 1990, p.3) These points together are summarized well by Rober where he comments on the philosophical works of Martin Buber stating that “… distinguishing the I-Thou relationship from the more self-centered, utilitarian I-It relationship … [describes] how the growth of a person is not accomplished in relation to oneself, but instead in the dialogical relation between the I and the other.” (Rober, 2005, p.386)

Personal reflections
Examining myself not as a static person, but more as a state of being at this moment in time is pretty abstract for me. I certainly agree that I am a collection of all that existed before me, but I just don’t commonly view myself in that manner. It really requires me to almost think of myself in the third person. I believe in the context of therapy that this line of thinking may be useful and perhaps even necessary in order to transcend certain limitations, but to consider myself in this manner on a daily basis will require effort that I have yet to sanction as preferable.
Defining my language as it relates to my individual culture and experience is not that far off from where I consider it normally. I’ve experienced several linguistic transitions in my lifetime. My first transition was when I made a conscious decision as a young adult to not use curse words in my everyday conversations. This amounted to me being more aware of my language and how it perpetuates certain behaviors and feelings. When I returned to school to finish my Bachelor’s degree in 2004 I asked my English composition instructor how I might improve my vocabulary and use of the English language for everyday use. She advised me to read classic books; a lot of them. So, I took it another step and began renting audio books from my local library and over the course of a couple of years I read every classic (published prior to 1970) book I could rent. What I found by the time I reached graduate school in 2006 was that I absolutely loved language and composition. I enjoyed expressing myself in a meaningful and detailed manner. Even writing technical documents at work became more enjoyable. This simple advice that my instructor shared with me allowed me to tap into a new and gratifying experience that I continue to enjoy every day. So, my language or way of speaking is not something I read in an instruction manual and then proceeded to begin writing the way that I do now. It is as mentioned above, “a dialogical relation between [me]… and the other.”

Adam T

References
Becvar, D.S., & Becvar, R.J. (2009). Family therapy: A systemic integration (7thed). Boston: Pearson, Allyn, and Bacon. ISBN: 9780205609239.
Hoffman, L. (1990). Constructing realities: An art of lenses. Family Process, 29(1), 1-12. Blackwell Publishing
Peter Rober. (2005). Family therapy as a dialogue of living persons: A perspective inspired by Bakhtin Voloshinov, and Shotter. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 31(4), 385-97. Retrieved May 4, 2010, from ProQuest Medical Library. (Document ID: 914573911).

Excerpts from Adam’s Notebook Vol.16(6)

I recently had to discuss relationship factors and what makes a longterm relationship.  I certainly do not speak authoritativly on this topic, but I love where I am in my marriage and therefore feel compelled to ramble on.  Here’s my posting.  Thanks for reading.

Personal Observations

Stenberg’s Triangular Theory of Love has always been compelling to me.  It really simplifies the dynamics of a relationship without detracting from the importance and meaning that is instilled in my personal experience.  I suppose I could say I find it validating in my experience (2nd marriage, 3 relationships)  I clearly see where my former marriage and relationships lacked and I see how my 2nd marriage (12 years) is balanced.  There is one component that I believe really deserves its own point on the triangle; that’s trust.  Trust is something I never had till my current marriage and without a doubt, it is the gatekeeper of the other three elements in our marriage.  Without our trust, we would not have intimacy, passion or commitment. 

 Intimacy – This represents the closeness that one can experience with a partner.  This is particularly meaningful when one person reveals their vulnerabilities to the other for support or validation.  It can be summarized as the bond and connectedness that arises from closeness and giving and receiving emotional support. (Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus, 2008)

Passion – This factor speaks to the desire, sexual and romantic that a couple experiences.  Personally, I find that my wife defines my passion in her being.  Our romance is supported by our attraction to each other and our desire to know more about each other.  We somehow manage to maintain independence, thereby contributing to the our attractiveness to each other.  Esther Perel summarizes these contrasting feelings well in her 2006 text stating,

For some of us, love and desire are inseparable.  But for many others, emotional intimacy inhibits erotic expression.  The caring, protective elements that foster love often block the unselfconsciousness that fuels erotic pleasure.

(Perel, 2006, p.xv)

While on some levels this text was beyond my threshold of agreement, I could relate quite well to the balance of intimacy and erotic desire.  Being so intimate with someone that there is little or no mystery remaining seriously detracts from the levels of desire one feels for that person.  Maintaining individuality in a relationship is as key to passion as intimacy.  It’s the balance of both.

Commitment – Commitment speaks to personal and collaborative dedication to maintaining the relationship.  For me this is very key for my current marriage and has contributed greatly to the trust that we maintain.  We both know that we are committed for life, through whatever comes our way and that trust in each other’s commitment allows for the unabashed expression of intimacy, vulnerability, love and desire as well as some feelings often avoided including anger, sadness and guilt. 

Trust – As touched on in the other factors above, this trust exists in all elements in a long-term relationship.  This is not to say that I trust my wife with absolutely everything.  Rest assured, I am extremely uncomfortable with her and technology, just as she is uncomfortable trusting me and money.  When it comes to me and our marriage, I can trust my wife absolutely without question.  I know that she is committed to our relationship and will do all she can maintain that commitment.  I also trust myself with our marriage and her well being.  She knows I would never do anything to hurt her or our marriage. 

Often, I struggle with expressing much of what I’ve expressed here as it sometimes sounds too dreamy or maybe irrational.   But, I can assure you that it didn’t come cheap.  I spent several years in a failing marriage and various relationships before achieving something I thought never possible.  I believe in our love without doubt and believe that its longevity is a given; because I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

Adam T

References

Perel, E. (2006). Mating in captivity – Reconciling the erotic + the domestic (1st ed.) New York: HarperCollins

Rathus, S. A., Nevid, J. S., & Fichner-Rathus, L. (2008). Human sexuality in a world of diversity (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Excerpts from Adam’s Notebook – Vol.16(3)

So, classes started back up and in my effort to reject craziness, I have tried to back off of some of the other things in my life. I think I’m starting to find balance, but I believe school will have to completed before that balance falls into place. I’m enjoying this semester as my two classes are quite interesting. My first class is with my friends from Minneapolis – it is a delight to be in a class where I know so much about my classmates. Really rewarding. My other class really challenges me sometimes in my love of stereotypes; Human Sexuality. This week, in one of my discussions, I had to write about gender identity and transsexuals. I hope I wasn’t too controvesial – although…. I do love to shake things up and make them interesting at times.

Unit 3, Discussion 3 – Gender Identity

This quite interesting topic unfortunately suffers from a great social stigma within the United States; otherwise it may be more aggressively researched to determine the viability of the gender state and possible implications. The question is not so much has the gender changed; it is whether the body is now aligned with the gender. Did the woman in a man’s body finally find herself in a woman’s body and vice versa? Must gender be so black and white? Perhaps gender exists on a sliding scale and some men are more sensitive and insightful than others. Perhaps some women are more physically capable than others. Rathus, Nevid and Fichner-Rathus write about a third gender pointing out that “In some cultures …, a third sex or gender may represent an intermediate state between men and women, or it may represent a state of being both…” (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathus, 2008, p.179) This would explain the phenomena of some transsexuals choosing to have surgery and some choosing no medication or surgery. It is possible that some transsexuals feel completely out of place in their own body and will go to any extent to have that resolved and others only feel a moderate tendency towards the opposite sex. It certainly aligns with the norms in American society in that some men appear to have feminine tendencies while living out their life as heterosexuals and seemingly happy to do so. The opposite can be said for women. So considering this sliding scale of gender identity, one could assume that in addition to black and white there are numerous shades of grey in between. Researching and acknowledging such an idea will first require the extinguishment of the social stigma of a transsexual.

Adam T

References

Rathus, S. A., Nevid, J. S., & Fichner-Rathus, L. (2008). Human sexuality in a world of diversity (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon

Rejecting Craziness….

OK, so I just returned from my second Colloquium where I experienced connections and emotions I would never have thought possible in such a short time.  First off, I was able to reconnect with a couple of friends from my first Colloquium affirming that friendship beyond just our mutual goals.  In addition, I met and got to know a whole new group of people and experience a taste of what my career will be before I know it.  Amidst these mock sessions, we connected as a group and I was able to not only uncover personal thoughts, beliefs and emotions but also to share in others’ as well.  I can’t delineate exactly the formula for this successful connection, but I can say that it is unlikely to ever happen to me again.  I connected in a similar way in my first Colloquium, but this was (at least from my perspective) universal to all the group members.  We all connected and embraced the power of our new connection.  I believe this collective connection was facilitated by our great instructors.  It was like an alignment of people, circumstances and experience that just united in one objective; become one.

So, now where does that leave me now that the week is over and we’ve returned to our individual lives?  My initial feeling was … lost.  I spent the next couple of days feeling disjointed; almost like I was observing my own life from a 3rd person perspective.  I absolutely had little inspiration to do much beyond striving to maintain this connection that became so meaningful to me.  I went to work in a daze thinking, “What am I doing?”  I just really lacked direction for 2 days.  In hindsight I see that I was just affixed to that moment of connection and frankly didn’t want to leave.  Much like you might imagine someone staring at a train track long after their loved one has traveled on.

Now, amidst all this, life doesn’t stop when we choose to stop and embrace a moment.  It continues all around us.  The by-product of this experience is that I have gained a unique perspective of my life that I hadn’t yet taken the time to witness.  It’s crazy.  I’ve convinced myself for years thinking that I work to simplify my lifestyle; who am I kidding?  As I sit back and observe the craziness happen around me I realize that if I am to achieve the goals in my life I need to make room for these new experiences.  I need to seriously slim it down.  I have my family of 7, my career, my education and my future to think about.  It’s all well and good to be altruistic to others and organizations that we believe in, but a person can only do so much.

So, with this new perspective I commit to myself a downsize that includes the most important parts of the aforementioned aspects of my life.  This pace is for people who are not on high blood pressure medicine.  I want to know that I did take the time to embrace those awesome experiences in my life and allow them to grow and become part of what defines me as a person.  I oblige myself to liberate the aspects of my life that are just too much.  In this endeavor, I believe I will revisit this perspective and visualize exactly all that I’ve been missing in the craziness that is my life; …others’ lives.

Adam T

Excerpts from Adam’s Notebook – Vol.13(3)

So, class is back up again.  It’s getting to be more and more real as I approach my second colloquia next month.  This semester I start preparing for practicum and clinical.  I have to get my porfolio together which includes a multitude of items that require my undivided attention.  However, I don’t have any large segments of undivided attention left.  Consequently, my portfolio will get 2 mornings a week where I hopefully won’t oversleep or be bogged down with househould duties like wash and fixing people’s computers.  It is what it is.  None the less, it is all exciting and triggers a thoughts that I won’t complete this or simply can’t do it.  Seems there’s plenty to battle with in my mind let alone the actual hurdles I need to overcome like my juvie stuff that still haunts me.  I’m holding strong, but I am noticing the increased difficulty as I approach D – 8 months.  Thanks for the continued encouragement and outlet.  I’m three weeks into my Assessments class and writing about IQ testing.  Mildly interesting discussion, I’ll share.  Thanks.

As it has been for over 100 years and still today there is considerable interest in measuring the intellect of an individual. This initiative to gauge the academic and cognitive aptitude of a particular person disseminates from many sources including employers, military, academic institutions as well as societal norms. While the intentions of these sources are likely noble, the development and use of intelligence testing has not been without controversy. Recently, this controversy speaks mostly to emphasis that society attaches to the intelligence quotient (IQ) often measured in intelligence testing. In an article discussing emotional intelligence, Abraham points out that many companies are in direct contrast with their recruitment methods (Abraham, 2006.) She states that the most effective leaders attribute their success to qualities such as integrity, maturity, business acumen and social skills, whereas the recruitment methods of even their own companies focus too much on an applicant’s IQ. (Abraham, 2006) She purports that in order to decrease their turnover rate, “firms need to use recruitment strategies that go beyond merely assessing IQ measures and technical skills because even in entry-level positions, IQ can’t reliably distinguish average and star performers” (Abraham, 2006, p.68) In 1939, David Wechsler recognized the deficiencies in IQ testing and developed a series of tests addressing many of the different aspects of intelligence categorized in verbal and performance (non-verbal) indicators (Hood & Johnson, 2007.) Later the test was rewritten for children and teenagers and then again for preschoolers. These tests are some of the most prevalent tests used in schools and universities today (Hood & Johnson, 2007.)

Despite its limitations, intelligence testing remains useful in gauging the overall capabilities and knowledge of an individual’s intelligence; especially when used in corroboration with other assessment tools. When used collectively and administered correctly, intelligence testing can provide expansive insight to a particular individual. Hood and Johnson note that “An experienced examiner has the opportunity to observe and judge a variety of behaviors and aspects of the individual’s personality.” (Hood & Johnson, 2007, p. 65) That being said, many counselors do not administer the actual test and if there is no verbal consult between the administrator or test examiner and the counselor then this observed data is lost if not provided on an addendum to the test results.

 

Adam T

 

 References

 

Abraham, A. (2006). The Need for the Integration of Emotional Intelligence Skills in Business Education. Business Renaissance Quarterly, 1(3), 65-79. http://search.ebscohost.com.library.capella.edu

 

Hood, A. B., & Johnson, R. W. (2007). Assessment in counseling: A guide to the use of psychological assessment procedures (4th ed.). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association. ISBN: 155620261X

 

Achievement tests in use today range from lesson tests administered in classrooms to adult examinations that determine skill sets and real-world knowledge. These tests differ from intelligence tests in that they measure the effectiveness of teaching methods and the breadth of knowledge learned. Intelligence testing measures the overall non-specific knowledge and capabilities. Additionally, intelligence testing cannot undergo the same preparations that might normally accompany an achievement test such as coaching and practice tests as this would invalidate the results. Practicing for an achievement test simply reinforces the intended learned material therefore it is a commonly accepted custom.

Incorporating achievement and intelligence tests can prove to be insightful and useful in assessing an individual. An example of this is with the Wechsler series of tests that includes the WIAT-II (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test 2nd Edition) and the WIAS-III (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – 3rd Edition) (Hood & Johnson, 2007) Glutting, Watkins, Konold and McDermott recognize the incongruence in using assessment tests separately as a diagnostic indicator, noting that their study results indicate high reasoning in going beyond IQ testing in order to fully understand a client’s latent cognitive abilities (Glutting, Watkins, Konold & McDermott, 2006) In their study of intelligence and achievement tests, they note “… that g accounts for only 25% to 50% of the variance in achievement, leaving 50% to 75% of the variance to be explained by other constructs” (2006, p.105)

Most practitioners would agree that assessing an individual requires a relevant and eclectic perspective and therefore should include the use of relevant and eclectic tools. Clearly indicated by criterion based research, assessment tools are not the tell-all indicators they are sometimes setup to be. Ingraining this in the collective minds of examinees and society as a whole is the clear directive of practitioners and test administrators.

 

Adam T.

 

References

 

Glutting, J., Watkins, M., Konold, T., & McDermott, P. (2006). Distinctions Without a Difference: The Utility of Observed Versus Latent Factors From the WISC-IV in Estimating Reading and Math Achievement on the WIAT-II. Journal of Special Education, 40(2), 103-114. http://search.ebscohost.com.library.capella.edu

 

Hood, A. B., & Johnson, R. W. (2007). Assessment in counseling: A guide to the use of psychological assessment procedures (4th ed.). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association. ISBN: 155620261X