Modern Interpretation Methods

Abstract

The extent of “crudity“ to employ in test interpretation remains the central conundrum for the psychologist. And was said well by Doll (1953), the special circumstances of each assessment, such as the differing needs for diagnosis, treatment planning, and establishing prognosis, all must be met. In addition, the context of the client’s life, akin to the relationship ofhumidity to perceptions of temperature, affects interpretation. The fourth child in a family of academically gifted children may be perceived as cognitively delayed if his overall intelligence composite is a mere 100. On the contrary, a hard-working person of average general intellectual ability may seem precocious if she attends a college with an easy curriculum. In other words, we must carefully consider contextual variables such as career choice, educational aspirations, educational history, curriculum demands, peer competitors, sibling performance, cultural demands, linguistic competencies, medical history, and numerous other qualitative variables prior to judging the appropriate “crudity” of our conclusions. For this reason I use the term integrative or integrate with some frequency throughout this chapter in order to emphasize the necessity of making interpretations in the light of knowledge of environmental contexts.