Rebekah Sauvola
Response Paper 5
Southern New Hampshire University
Diagnosing psychological and mental illness through using psychological measures has some great possibilities but still has some weaknesses. There are so many variables in psychological testing that it would be hard to diagnose someone on just a test alone. There needs to be many other parts to a diagnosis other than just a test. It might be too easy to misdiagnose a person if the test was not the right one for them or the test was interpreted incorrectly. If utilized in a correct way, psychological tests could be a very useful tool when diagnosing patients. In the study done on the Alzheimer's test, results seem to have a positive outlook. They say that The Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) List Learning test is a promising tool for the memory assessment of older adults due to its simplicity of administration, good psychometric properties, equivalent forms, and extensive normative data (Gavett et al, 2009). The NAB is shown to be around 80 percent accurate (Gavett et al, 2009). This seems to be a more reliable test to aid in diagnosing Alzheimer's. This should not be the only tool used to diagnose, but rather another tool to aid in diagnosing. …show more content…
This is a far less predictable test than the NAB. This one has been show to be less reliable. This could be due to the fact that psychotic people are very unpredictable as well as many other factors. What most people in the psychology field have been doing with the PCL-R has been to utilize this test with an array of other tests and also considering any other diagnosis too. (Cooke & Michie, 2009) This is a well-known test, but has many chances to be inaccurate. It is important that if this test is used, that psychologists use it with other tools as
Response Paper 5
Southern New Hampshire University
Diagnosing psychological and mental illness through using psychological measures has some great possibilities but still has some weaknesses. There are so many variables in psychological testing that it would be hard to diagnose someone on just a test alone. There needs to be many other parts to a diagnosis other than just a test. It might be too easy to misdiagnose a person if the test was not the right one for them or the test was interpreted incorrectly. If utilized in a correct way, psychological tests could be a very useful tool when diagnosing patients. In the study done on the Alzheimer's test, results seem to have a positive outlook. They say that The Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) List Learning test is a promising tool for the memory assessment of older adults due to its simplicity of administration, good psychometric properties, equivalent forms, and extensive normative data (Gavett et al, 2009). The NAB is shown to be around 80 percent accurate (Gavett et al, 2009). This seems to be a more reliable test to aid in diagnosing Alzheimer's. This should not be the only tool used to diagnose, but rather another tool to aid in diagnosing. …show more content…
This is a far less predictable test than the NAB. This one has been show to be less reliable. This could be due to the fact that psychotic people are very unpredictable as well as many other factors. What most people in the psychology field have been doing with the PCL-R has been to utilize this test with an array of other tests and also considering any other diagnosis too. (Cooke & Michie, 2009) This is a well-known test, but has many chances to be inaccurate. It is important that if this test is used, that psychologists use it with other tools as