Introduction to the Special Section on Teaching,Training, and Supervision in Personality and Psychological Assessment

This special section contains empirical and conceptual articles pertaining to the broad topic of teaching, training, and supervision of assessment. Despite some evidence of a decline in recent decades, assessment remains a defining practice of professional psychologists in many subfields, including clinical, counseling, school, and neuropsychology, that consumes a consequential proportion of their time. To restore assessment to its rightful place of prominence, a clear agenda needs to be developed for advancing teaching and training methods, increasing instruction to state-of-the-art methods, and defining aims that could be elucidated through empirical inquiry. The 7 articles in this special section provide a developmental perspective of these issues that collectively provide practical tools for instructors and begin to set the stage for a research agenda in this somewhat neglected area of study that is vital to the identity of professional psychology. Additionally, 2 comments are provided by distinguished figures in the field concerning the implications of the articles in the special section to health services psychology and the competencies-based movement in applied psychology.     

Introduction to the Special Section on Mixture Modeling in Personality Assessment

Latent variable models offer a conceptual and statistical framework for evaluating the underlying structure of psychological constructs, including personality and psychopathology. Complex structures that combine or compare categorical and dimensional latent variables can be accommodated using mixture modeling approaches, which provide a powerful framework for testing nuanced theories about psychological structure. This special series includes introductory primers on cross-sectional and longitudinal mixture modeling, in addition to empirical examples applying these techniques to real-world data collected in clinical settings. This group of articles is designed to introduce personality assessment scientists and practitioners to a general latent variable framework that we hope will stimulate new research and application of mixture models to the assessment of personality and its pathology.     

Introduction to the Special Section on Cognitive Science and Psychological Assessment

This introduction to the Special Section on Cognitive Science and Psychological Assessment begins with a brief overview of cognitive science and its interface with the clinical assessment of cognitive functioning. Concepts and themes permeating the articles in this section are then taken up. Included are cognitive-model architectures and model parameters, differential emphasis on efficiency versus content of cognition, and implementation of stochastic and dynamical aspects of cognitive processes. Selected distinguishing attributes of the respective contributions are highlighted.     

Teaching Psychological Assessment: Training issues and Teaching Approaches

Clinical psychology graduate programs need to pay attention to important issues involved in teaching psychological assessment, if graduate students are to be adequately prepared. Recent studies have suggested a gap between academic training in psychological assessment and internship expectations. Graduate students are not as well prepared as many internship settings would like. In addition to learning the fundamentals, students need help in dealing with issues of categorizing individuals, using tests in helpful ways, taking responsibility for decision-making, and developing a balance between critical evaluation of tests and appreciation of their usefulness. Teaching approaches for dealing with these issues are discussed. The importance of academic and clinical agencies working together is stressed. Goals for graduate training in assessment are suggested.     

Commentary on the Special Issue: Religion in the Psychology of Personality

The author comments on the special issue on religion in the psychology of personality. She focuses her discussion on the following topics: the historical tripartite theory of cognition-affection-conation; ways that family psychology and theories of language clarify the "problem" of adherence to "false realities"; the multidimensionality of personality and religion and their cultural embeddedness as illuminated in clinical assessment by way of contextual family theory (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986) and the Kantor and Lehr (1975) systems theory; the role of the investigator's personality in theory and research about personality and religion; the one-sided emphasis on the empirical tradition in the psychology of religion; and the omission of the personalist tradition.     

Personality Assessment in Today's Health Care Environment: Therapeutic Alliance and Patient Satisfaction

This autobiography traces my professional and, to a lesser extent, personal life through my career as a forensic and correctional psychologist. As an only child living in the country and later attending boarding schools from the fifth grade through high school, I learned to be self-reliant and independent. These traits led me to join an archaeological expedition to Oaxaca when I was 18, which fostered my interest in anthropology and then psychology at Amherst. I survived the clinical training program at the University of California at Berkeley and while still in graduate school obtained a staff position at the Alameda County Probation Department Guidance Clinic where I began my interrelated research paths on clinical assessment and the dynamics of aggression, paths I continued as an assistant professor at the University of Texas (1964–1967) and as an associate to full professor at the Florida State University (1967–2003). My major research contributions have been the (a) delineation of the overcontrolled and undercontrolled assaultive syndromes; (b) development of the MMPI–2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, &; Kaemmer, 1989 Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A. and Kaemmer, B. 1989. MMPI-2: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2: Manual for administration and scoring, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]) Overcontrolled Hostility (O–H) Scale; (c) formulation of the “Algebra of Aggression,” a theoretical framework for evaluating and understanding aggressive behavior; (d) exploration of how gender roles interact with dominance in leadership assumption; (e) empirical demonstration of the adverse effects of population density on adjustment in correctional institutions; and (f) development and validation of a classification system for adult criminal offenders based on the MMPI–2.     

Behavioral Assessment in DBT: Commentary on the Special Series

Behavioral assessment is woven into the fabric of DBT. The articles of this special series beautifully illustrate this point by describing the relevance and application of behavioral assessment principles in several DBT contexts: creating a case formulation; assessing suicidal behavior; client use of DBT skills; and within family or couple interventions. This commentary highlights themes common to the papers and discusses assessment as it relates to several core concepts in DBT: behaviorism, acceptance, dialectics, and the assumptions about treatment. We identify several dialectical tensions that practitioners must balance when using behavioral assessment strategies. Suggestions for clinical practice are provided.     

Commentary: Prevention/Intervention Trials and Developmental Theory: Commentary on the Fast Track Special Section

Well-conducted prevention and intervention research has the potential to serve the dual ends of enhancing children's adaptive outcomes and elucidating important developmental processes and mechanisms related to change. Admirably, the Fast Track preventive intervention was conceived in accord with explicit developmental theory related to the development of conduct problems. Herein, I consider how the present reports of grade-3 outcomes allow examination of causal processes and developmental mechanisms related to the effects uncovered, featuring the constructs of prediction, moderation, and particularly mediation. The multifaceted, intensive nature of the Fast Track preventive intervention is at once a clinical strength and a liability in terms of isolating causal processes underlying child change. I also consider issues related to the random assignment of the investigation and to policies that may emerge from the findings. In all, research that aims to identify relevant developmental and causal processes must incorporate both experimental and nonexperimental paradigms that are conceptualized from the outset with explanatory purposes in mind.     

Investigating the Big Five Personality Factors and Smoking: Implications for Assessment

Global personality dispositions may be important for understanding population-based individual differences in smoking outcomes, yet few studies have been executed using measures of these global dispositional constructs from the contemporary field of personality. This study explored whether the Big Five personality factors (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect) were concurrently associated with key smoking (e.g., nicotine dependence, smoking rate, age at first cigarette) and cessation (e.g., self-efficacy to quit, motivation to quit, number of prior quit attempts, length of most recent quit) variables in a sample of regular smokers (n = 130). Of the 35 correlations computed, only 2 were significant: Intellect was positively correlated with motivation to quit and number of 24-hr quit attempts in the last year. These results have implications for using trait variables to study individual differences in smokers.     

Burnout in Health Care: The Role of the Five Factors of Personality

Job burnout continues to plague organizations and individuals, resulting in costly consequences. In examining the antecedents to job burnout, prior research has primarily focused on role stressors present in the job environment. with little attention given to individual characteristics. The purpose of this field study was to examine the extent to which dimensions of an individual's personality have differential efects on the 3 components of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization. and diminished personal accomplishment) among nurses working in a hospital. After controlling for several demographic variables and 3 role stressors, findings indicate that specific dimensions of personality do significantly and differentially impact the experience of the 3 components of burnout.     

美国家庭的衰弱:对卫生保健制度的一些启示

传统社会的人并不孤单,当他们生病、衰老时会得到家庭成员的照料.在美国,越来越多的孩子出生在婚姻之外,家庭正在逐步消失.在那些经济和社会资源来源极少的人群中,传统家庭消失得最为迅速,预示着日益增加的社会反常状态.即使对于卫生保健极为重要的非正式支持网络没有丧失,传统家庭也一样正在衰弱.因此,医疗改革必需重视家庭医疗保健储蓄账户,以阻止家庭完整性的剧烈衰弱.