psy121 - Psychological assessment and diagnostics (Complete module description)

Goals of module:
Students will acquire specific knowledge about psychological assessment, test theory and test construction, and will be trained to utilize this knowledge within a research or test development context and in applied settings. With respect to research applications they will learn about traditional and modern test theories and about their usage in the domain of applied psychometrics and the systematic design of interviews and observational methods. From the perspective of applied assessment, students will reflect on the assessment process as a whole. They will learn how to analyze cases (“case conceptualization”), how to plan and conduct the information assessment phase, how to record and summarize collected data and how to integrate across the multitude of information in order to draw conclusions about the case given specific diagnostic strategies (status vs. process assessment and norm oriented vs. criterion oriented assessment, including classificatory decisions). Finally, students will learn about the requirements of test and assessment report generation in written an oral form given a specific applied context. Ethical guidelines and quality norms will be an implicit topic in all courses in the module.

Competencies:
+ Neuropsychological / neurophysiological knowledge
+ interdisciplinary kowledge & thinking
+ ethics / good scientific practice / professional behavior
+ critical & analytical thinking

Part 1: Introduction to Psychological Assessment (lecture): winter and summer
• Psychological assessment as a decision process – descriptive and prescriptive models
• Introduction to test theories (will be detailed in Part 3)
• Assessment methods, their construction and design, quality criteria
• The logic of decision making in the assessment process
• Classificatory decisions
• Psychometrics to single cases
• Summarizing results and writing reports

Part 2: Test Theory and Test Construction (lecture): winter and summer

• Classical test theory
• Generalizability theory
• Latent-State and Trait theory
• Latent variable models for different types of item responses
• Measurement invariance across groups and time
• Network modeling in psychometrics
• Preference modeling for constructing faking-resistant questionnaires and tests

Part 3: applied seminars: winter and summer (choose a or b)
a: The Assessment Process Applied OR
• Case conceptualization (neuropsychology and clinical psychology)
• Formulating hypotheses
• Selecting assessment procedures and planning administration
• Deciding upon decision rules for data integration
• Evaluating the application of assessment procedures
• Analyzing, summarizing and visualizing results
• Integrating results based on the decision rules
• Writing a psychological/assessment report
• Discussing a report with the client

b: Test Construction Applied
• Construct conceptualization
• Deciding upon the response format
• Item mining
• Item analysis
• Test quality report and test manual

Part 4: Assessment in Clinical Neuropsychology (seminar): summer
• specific knowledge
• exercises in testing / practising tests