What Are the Types of Psychological Tests & Evaluations?

Sep 29

Psychological testing or evaluation can be key to getting an accurate diagnosis. It can help uncover answers for the things affecting your own life or your teen's. Perhaps there are academic struggles, emotional setbacks, etc. Perhaps these struggles have started to affect self-esteem.

Whether you're looking for a psychological evaluation for yourself or for your teen, the right evaluation can make a world of difference.

Why Is Testing Important?

Without psychological testing, a person may continue to face roadblocks in their life. Think of it like trying to navigate in the woods without a compass. Furthermore, many people are misdiagnosed by primary care physicians who lack specialized expertise or even by other therapists who simply don't have available testing.

For Teens

Without an accurate picture of what's happening, your teen will likely experience further academic failure, suspensions, and low self-esteem. This is especially true when the school staff doesn't understand your teen's needs.

For Adults

Adults struggling with this kind of aimlessness in diagnosis, or a lack of understanding of what's going on, may seek the wrong treatment or even turn to harmful self-medicating. Psychological testing helps avoid these continued issues because it creates an accurate picture of what's happening under the surface. With it, we can see what is affecting thoughts and behaviors and whether it is psychological or neurological.

What Are the Types of Psychological Testing?

There are several different types of testing, but most commonly, they include:

Clinical interviews
Intellectual functioning (IQ) assessment
Personality assessment
Behavioral assessment

Clinical Interviews

This is a key part of any psychological evaluation. This is when a mental health professional gathers information about a person's background, including family history, reviewing initial questionnaires, asking follow-up questions, and generally learning more about their demographic.

Intellectual Functioning Assessment

This assessment helps determine if there are any intellectual impairments at play. It looks at higher cognitive functions, including memory, language processing, and deductive reasoning. These are some of the core factors affected by intellectual impairments.

Suppose your teen is struggling in school, or perhaps you're having difficulty functioning at work. In that case, this type of testing can help uncover any potential learning disabilities that may not have been previously identified.

Personality Assessment

Clinical personality assessments account for all the complex factors at play with personality. It's not like the tests you find in the back of a magazine. This type of assessment looks at core personality traits to help determine if this is where issues arise from. There are two common types of personality assessments: self-reported and projective.

Self-reported inventories (also known as objective tests) are a series of either true/false or survey-like questions a person answers. These tests examine personality-related areas like paranoia, hypomania, social introversion, masculinity/femininity, psychopathology, etc., to see any positive or negative correlations to each trait.

Projective tests use ambiguous stimuli to help identify a person's unconscious fears, desires, and the challenges they face with them. The clinician examines the response to uncover positive or negative correlations to various personality traits. The patient essentially interprets a vague prompt.

Behavioral Assessment

This is primarily observation. A therapist will observe a person's daily behavior patterns. In some cases, they may spend a day with a person in their home to observe their behaviors. Another common tactic is to ask the person to keep a mood journal so the therapist can review for any identifying patterns.

There are also some initial inventories or surveys that can help identify behavioral issues. A common one, for example, is an inventory to help determine behavioral issues related to depression.

Psychological testing can help provide the clarity you've been missing. My process is confidential, solution-focused, and highly specialized for your unique situation. If you're interested in learning more about it, reach out to me today.