A Cross Cultural Psychological Assessment Manual

This user-friendly manual provides a cross-cultural psychological assessment battery, including projective methods. Authors outline a new, empirically validated, reliable system, which seeks to update the scoreable and interpretable factors and entwine commonly respected “tried and true” graphomotor tests, thereby maximizing their efficacy in the assessment of significant psychological traits in children and adults. Because of its use as a gender fair, culture free, language free testing method, it will be a valuable asset in all areas of current psychological assessment. The CCPAB test takes approximately 20 to 40 minutes to administer, and does not require any administration materials that most practitioners would not have readily available. The CCPAB can be used by evaluators on its own or in conjunction with other psychological and neuropsychological test data, as well as by mental health treatment providers seeking a quick and accurate way to assess the psychological functioning of individuals aged six years and older. Multiple appendices contain information on scoring criteria, scoring keys, and a wealth of sample questions which will also be a useful resource for evaluators. This manual is appropriate for users ranging from graduate-level students in training and supervision to even the most skilled assessment psychologists for quick and valid assessment of a wide range of clients.

Throughout the world as in the United States, psychologists are increasingly being called upon to evaluate clients whose backgrounds differ from their own. It has long been recognized that standard personality and psychopathology assessment instruments carry cultural biases, and in recent years, efforts to correct these biases have accelerated. The Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment brings together researchers and practitioners from 12 countries with diverse ethnic and racial identities and training to present state-of-the-art knowledge about how best to minimize cultural biases in the assessment of personality and psychopathology. They consider research methodology, the design and construction of standard objective and projective tests, the use of measures of acculturation, racial identity, and culture-specific tests, the social etiquette of service delivery, and the interpretation of test data for clinical diagnosis. Ranging widely through all the relevant issues, they share a common collective vision of how culturally competent services should be delivered to clients. The Handbook offers the first comprehensive view of a consistent approach to cultural competence in assessment--a necessary precursor of effective intervention. It will become an indispensable reference for all those whose practice or research involves individuals with different ethnic and racial identities.

Adapting Educational and Psychological Tests for Cross-Cultural Assessment critically examines and advances new methods and practices for adapting tests for cross-cultural assessment and research. The International Test Commission (ITC) guidelines for test adaptation and conceptual and methodological issues in test adaptation are described in detail, and questions of ethics and concern for validity of test scores in cross-cultural contexts are carefully examined. Advances in test translation and adaptation methodology, including statistical identification of flawed test items, establishing equivalence of different language versions of a test, and methodologies for comparing tests in multiple languages, are reviewed and evaluated. The book also focuses on adapting ability, achievement, and personality tests for cross-cultural assessment in educational, industrial, and clinical settings. This book furthers the ITC's mission of stimulating research on timely topics associated with assessment. It provides an excellent resource for courses in psychometric methods, test construction, and educational and/or psychological assessment, testing, and measurement. Written by internationally known scholars in psychometric methods and cross-cultural psychology, the collection of chapters should also provide essential information for educators and psychologists involved in cross-cultural assessment, as well as students aspiring to such careers.

Part of a set containing the contributions of authors from a variety of nations, cultures, traditions and perspectives, this volume offers an up-to-date assessment of theoretical developments and methodological issues in the rapidly-evolving area of cross-cultural psychology.

This thorough analysis of multicultural assessment covers significant issues, including the major instruments and procedures, cognitive and educational assessment, and cross-cultural sensitivity and ethics. Offering the most current empirical research, theory, and specific recommendations, the volume includes case studies that illustrate culturally sensitive procedures and tables that highlight comparisons between particular measures, competencies, and assessment practices. Including updated articles from the original contributors as well as entirely new contributions, the revised version offers compelling ideas for conducting assessments with minority populations.

Against the background of NATO's Istanbul conference of 1971 (Cronbach and Drenth, 1972), the Kingston conference shows that great progress has been made by the community of cross-cultural psychologists. The progress is as much in the psychology of the investigators as in the investigations being reported. In 1971 the investigators were mostly strangers to each other. Behind their reports lay radically different field experiences, disparate research traditions, and mutually contradictory social ideals. Istanbul was not a Tower of Babel, but participants did speak past each other. Now a community exists, thanks to the meetings of NATO and the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, to flourishing journals, and the Triandis et a1. (1980) Handbook. The members tend to know each other, can anticipate how their formu lations will fallon the ears of others, and accept superficially divergent approaches as making up a collective enterprise. Ten years ago there was open conflict between those who con fronted exotic peoples with traditional tests and applied tradi tional interpretations to the responses, and the relativists who insisted that tasks, test taking, and interpretation cannot be "standardized" in the ways that matter. Today's investigators are conscious of the need to revalidate tasks carried into alien settings; they often prefer to redesign the mode of presentation and to attune the subject to test taking. They face the diffi culties squarely and recognize that even the best means of coping are only partially successful.

Cross-cultural research is now an undeniable part of mainstream psychology and has had a major impact on conceptual models of human behavior. Although it is true that the basic principles of social psychological methodology and data analysis are applicable to cross-cultural research, there are a number of issues that are distinct to it, including managing incongruities of language and quantifying cultural response sets in the use of scales. Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology provides state-of-the-art knowledge about the methodological problems that need to be addressed if a researcher is to conduct valid and reliable cross-cultural research. It also offers practical advice and examples of solutions to those problems and is a must-read for any student of culture.

To effectively serve minority clients, clinicians require a double understanding: of both evidence-based practice and the cultures involved. This particularly holds true when working with Asian-Americans, a diverse and growing population. The Guide to Psychological Assessment with Asians synthesizes real-world challenges, empirical findings, clinical knowledge and common-sense advice to create a comprehensive framework for practice. This informed resource is geared toward evaluation of first-generation Asian Americans and recent immigrants across assessment methods (self-report measures, projective tests), settings (school, forensic) and classes of disorders (eating, substance, sexual). While the Guide details cross-cultural considerations for working with Chinese-, Japanese-, Korean and Indian-American clients, best practices are also included for assessing members of less populous groups without underestimating, overstating or stereotyping the role of ethnicity in the findings. In addition, contributors discuss diversity of presentation within groups and identify ways that language may present obstacles to accurate evaluation. Among the areas covered in this up-to-date reference: Structured and semi-structured clinical interviews. Assessment of acculturation, enculturation and culture. IQ testing. Personality disorders. Cognitive decline and dementia. Mood disorders and suicidality. Neuropsychological assessment of children, adolescents and adults. Culture-bound syndromes. Designed for practitioners new to working with Asian clients as well as those familiar with the population, the Guide to Psychological Assessment with Asians is exceedingly useful to neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, health psychologists and clinical social workers.