Description
Culturally informed psychological assessment involves evaluation keenly focused on responsiveness and perception of issues to identity, acculturation, language, worldview, and values. These assessments influence the evaluation design and interpret the resulting data. Creating a proper assessment requires someone to read the object’s case history information (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2017). This information posits the chance to answer crucial questions concerning the person under assessment’s acculturation level. Individuals close to the assessee, such as their family, friends, professional workmates, and clergy, may offer valuable information on variables related to culture before the assessment begins.
Importance to Psychological Assessment
Culture plays a major role in shaping psychology. Belief systems influence individuals’ interpretations and how they cope with problems. These cultural notions further determine the fear of stigma, support networks, and how people seek help. In this instance, psychologists use an emic perspective, determining culture from within the group to discern the importance of such an understanding as each group is understood based on its terms (Josling et al., 2019). Societies have not employed culturally-sensitive psychological assessments in the past due to the difficult nature of implementation. They may have limited resources to conduct background checks due to social inequality (Laher & Cockcroft, 2017). Therefore, the trait is not due to a lack of interest but rather lack of resources to enact this form of assessment.
Limits to an Assessor
Cultural sensitivity limits a psychological assessor’s capacity to operate optimally as the assessment design does not posit a single meaning. Individuals do not exhibit the chance to develop accurate notions as each culture treats issues differently. Reconciling these factions is difficult as they do not have adequate descriptors (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2017). Furthermore, the culturally-oriented psychological assessment does not have a solid background as it remains theoretically ungrounded. Finally, as the theory does not have a foundation, it is void of research designs and measurements that assess its influence on treatment.
It is important to determine the different nature of people from varying cultures’ perceptions of cultural-oriented assessment. They do not posit a single culture, requiring the assessor to discern these cultures and their influence on a person’s psychological behavior. Furthermore, this form of assessment provides a notion of whether people of mixed races or cultures are likely to exhibit a combination of their origins in terms of character.
References
Cohen, R. J., & Swerdlik, M. E. (2017). Psychological testing and assessment: An introduction to tests and measurement (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Josling, I., Kochuparampil, P-R., Wilson, C., Dernevik, M., Ishaq, M., & Wright, K. (2019). Culture and diversity in psychological assessments and therapy. Psychology Experts. Web.
Laher, S., & Cockcroft, K. (2017). Moving from culturally biased to culturally responsive assessment practices in low-resource, multicultural settings. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 48(2), 115–121.