University studies on a graduate level ("licenciatura") began with the School of Psychology founded at Complutense of Madrid and Barcelona Universities around 1955. In 1968 the first Departments of Psychology were established in the Faculty of Philosophy of the Autónoma and Complutense Universities of Madrid, and 10 years later, in 1978, Faculties of Psychology were ruled by the Ministery of Education and Science (see in this issue, Prieto). But the most important item is to emphasize that (in all these offical studies, training in psychological assessment is required) all licenced psychologists are certified to conduct psychological assessment in Spain (aproximately thirty thousand, see in this isssue, Prieto).
A recent paper (Forns et al., 1989) places emphasis on the fact that, nowadays, in the 18 university centers offering degrees in psychology, several courses are included which are related to psychological assessment. In order to examine the number of existing courses and their content, we have carried out a survey among the faculty members teaching those courses (Márquez and Fernández-Ballesteros, 1990; Fernández-Ballesteros, 1991) and a summary of these results will be presented here.
From an analysis of the courses available in the Psychology licence programs of 15 Spanish Universities (we had no answer to our inquiry from 3 Universities), it can be stated that there is an average of 2.6 courses per University devoted to psychological assessment. We have also analyzed the titles of those 37 courses which include psychological assessment and other related courses given in the same 15 Spanish universities. From this data we can see that, aproximately, 42% of the Spanish university courses use the title "Psychodiagnosis". It is useful to note that --as occurs in German-speaking countries-- the title "Psychodiagnosis" in Spanish does not mean a clinical version of psychological assessment. Other courses take titles such us "Psychometric Tests" and "Psychological Assessment Tests and Techniques".
In order to examine these 37 courses more closely, we carried out an analysis of their Syllabus and have found that the 20,21% of the content is devoted to conceptual subjects (history, theoretical models and other basic concepts) and to basic methodology (assessment process, tests theory, etc.). As well as this, more than a third (34,1%) of the Syllabus is devoted to basic assessment technology (such as the interview, observation, etc.) and to specific procedures and tests set up according to a series of categories (for example, psychometric tests, such as the 16-PF from Cattell; projective techniques, such as the Rorschach, etc.). Also, in the Syllabus, many divisions can be found regarding basic fields such as personality and/or intelligence assessment (20,1%) and, finally, in the Syllabus we also found specific setting applications (such as clinical, school, work, etc.; 25,5%).
When we compare this analysis to a similar study carried out in 1977 (see Fernández-Ballesteros, 1980) it can be seen that there is an increase in conceptual topics (for example: in 1977 the theoretical models had a weight of 0,8% and in 1990 a weight of 2,9%), and in basic methodology (for example: in 1977, diagnostic processes had a weight of 2% and, in 1990, a weight of 3.64%). To conclude, in spite of the fact that psychological assessment (as it is taught in the Spanish universities) is fundamentally a practical and technological subject, its relationship to the basic theoretical and methodological psychology is becoming more and more important. In this sense it seems --at least in Spain-- that the separation of psychological testing from basic psychology, as reported by Anastasi, 1967, is decreasing (see Fernández-Ballesteros & Silva, 1989).
JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
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