Evaluating the diagnostic interview: Obstacles and future directions

Abstract

The diagnostic interview plays a prominent role within the field of clinical psychology and occupies a fundamental component in graduate training. Educators seem to be focusing less on objective measures to evaluate student skill performance and the overall quality of the interview. The authors review the current methods for evaluating the diagnostic interview in psychology training and identify some of the major obstacles in accurately assessing student interview proficiency. Recommendations are made to address these difficulties, and the authors note some promising future directions.

Assessment practices in the era of managed care: Current status and future directions

“…Clinicians in a managed care environment seem to rely on interview data for psychodiagnostic needs. Despite the psychometric shortcomings of the diagnostic interview as a data-gathering device (Matarazzo, 1983), there presently is a keen interest in the role of the interview in the field of clinical psychology (Craig, 1989;Smelson, Kordon, & Rudolph, 1997) and school psychology (Culross & Nelson, 1997). However, in the era of managed care, Ben-Porath (1997) has argued that although clinicians are required to specify goals for intervention, treatment needs often are identified on the basis of nonstandardized clinical interviews alone.…”

Assessment of personality in counseling settings.

“…Despite its ubiquity, the unstructured clinical interview has long been the subject of substantial controversy as being of poor validity compared with objective tests (Sawyer, 1966); poorly defined and specified (Matarazzo, 1978); and difficult to effectively teach, research, or evaluate psychometrically (Smelson, Kordon, & Rudolph, 1997). One major problem in evaluating the utility of the clinical interview lies in the widely diverse theoretical orientations, goals, questions and other clinician behaviors that may be comprised in a "clinical interview"; these differences in counselor and client behavior from interview to interview may lead to unreliable data collection.…”

Evaluating competency in the diagnostic interview among graduate psychology students: Development of generic scales.

“…Although competency evaluation is a formidable task (Smelson, Kordon, & Rudolph, 1997) gists, and McHolland (1991, p. 163) denned the assessment competency as "an ongoing, interactive, and inclusive process that serves to describe, conceptualize, characterize, and predict relevant aspects of a client. '' McHolland, Peterson, and Brown (1987) stipulated four basic component skill areas within the assessment competency: interviewing, testing, report writing, and engaging the client.…”

“…Although competency evaluation is a formidable task (Smelson, Kordon, & Rudolph, 1997), professional organizations support it (American Psychological Association [APA] Office of Program Consultation & Accreditation, Education Directorate, 1995; National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology [NCSPP] in Bent, 1991), and managed care organizations increasingly expect it. This article discusses the development of a unique system to evaluate objectively the assessment interview competency among second-year graduate students of the Illinois School of Professional Psychology: Chicago (ISPP:Chicago).…”