ONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
TEACHING
RESEARCH
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT:APPLIED TASKS
TEST USED IN SPAIN
REFERENCES
APPENDIX
In attempting to present an overview of psychological assessment in Spain, four main areas are reviewed: what is taught in the Spanish Universities, what is being researched in applied and basic fields, what tasks are conducted by psychologists regarding psychological assessment and which tests and methods are being used in practice. In order to establish what is taught in Spanish Universities, 15 Psychology Programs and 37 courses (and their correspondent Syllabus) will be analyzed. In order to learn about research areas in psychological assessment, national Congresses and Journals will be studied and comparisons with other international publications established. Regarding our interest about the tasks conducted by psychologists concerning psychological assessment, a national survey conducted by our national association of psychologists ("Colegio Oficial de Psicológos" COP) will be examined. Finally, in order to learn which are the tests and methods used, some other data will be presented. All these results show strong developments of psychological assessment in Spain.
It is commonly understood that psychological assessment is the subdiscipline of psychology which is devoted to the process of examination and scientific analysis (by means of testing) of the behaviours and other psychological characteristics of one human subject (or a specified group of subjects), (Maloney & Ward, 1976; Fernández-Ballesteros, 1980). Its goals are mainly and basically applied, such as diagnosis, counselling, career development, personnel selection and treatment planning and evaluation. Psychological assessment has three main concerns: First, it deals with the process in which decisions to anwering all relevant questions proposed by client/s or situation will be managed; secondly, and obviously, fundamental psychological knowledge about what will be assessed (intelligence, personality, psychopathology, etc.) is required; and, finally, construction, administration, scoring and interpretation of tests and other measurement devices and methods concerning psychological assessment are necessary.
It is not my purpose here to deal with a historical approach to assessment since a separate article in this issue is devoted to that (see, Carpintero; also, Carpintero, 1989). Rather, my aim is to present an overview of the present scenario of psychological assessment in Spain. Therefore, I have chosen to focus on four main areas: how psychological assessment is formally taught in the Universities; what is being researched in applied and basic fields; which is being done in the area of applied psychology, and lastly what tests are being used in the common practice.
JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
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LAST UPDATED Sunday 6 de August de 1995 - -