E-raamat: Assessment in Counseling: Practice and Applications

"Too often students experience assessment courses, and subsequently the textbooks used for the course, as a statistics-heavy class accompanied by an encyclopedia of a variety of assessments. We take a different approach. Our approach to this book was to create a text that would emphasize assessment as a skill for professional counselors. We emphasize the skills used in assessment and believe that once you understand the skills you can apply these skills across a broad range of assessment instruments and strategies. Assessment, like most core areas of counseling, has a theoretical basis and a pertinent, practical component. However, this practical component often gets lost in the application of the skills and use of instruments that heavily rely on psychometric properties. Instead of introducing you to a plethora of instruments, we select seminal measures that you are likely to comes across and use in the profession. We do not focus on types of assessments typically not used by professional counselors, such as projective measures. The instruments we discuss are commonly used in professional counseling but by no means exhaustive. But through the use of this text and course content you will have the skills to search, select, and administer the type of assessment instruments that you deem helpful for your practice as a professional counselor, regardless of your specialization. Through this format, you will, we hope, see examples of assessment principles that may be applied to a variety of settings. Our goal is for this textbook to serve as a guide for administering, scoring, interpreting, and communicating assessment results"--

Assessment in Counseling takes a different approach to assessment courses, which students often experience as a statistics-heavy class accompanied by a wide variety of assessments. Richard S. Balkin and Gerald A. Juhnke emphasize the skills used in assessment and supports the use of these skills across a broad range of assessment instruments and strategies. Assessment, like more core areas of counseling, has a theoretical basis and a pertinent, practical component. However, this practical component often gets lost in the application of the skills and use of instructions that heavily rely on psychometric properties.

Written in an accessible, conversational tone, the book focuses on the application of the theoretical and measurement concepts of assessment in counseling and introduces three case studies that are followed throughout the text. Instead of introducing readers to a plethora of instruments, Balkin and Juhnke have selected seminal measures that students are likely to come across and use in the profession. Through the use of this book and their course content, students will gain the skills to search, select, and administer the type of assessment instruments deemed helpful for their practice as a professional counselor, regardless of specialization.

This new edition provides updates on the laws, codes, and instruments covered, the most recent application of measures and the psychometric properties associated with them, and additions on career assessment and personality. It also features a new chapter on environmental assessment that highlights data collection practices and the role of assessing, accommodating, and recommending levels of care.

Ultimately, this textbook serves as a guide for administering, scoring, interpreting, and communicating assessment results.

This book takes a different approach to assessment courses, which students often experience as a statistics-heavy class accompanied by a wide variety of assessments. It emphasizes the skills used in assessment and supports the use of these skills across a broad range of assessment instruments and strategies. It ultimately serves as a guide for administering, scoring, interpreting, and communicating assessment results.