Assessment Tools and Validated Measures · Clinical Exercise

Pick the Instrument

Nine instruments on the shelf and seven clinical questions. Some questions need two instruments. One needs none of them, and selecting nothing is the correct answer to it.

What this exercise practises

Choosing a measure from the clinical question rather than from the presenting domain, pairing functional and distress instruments because neither captures the other, and reaching for an adjacent-domain measure when the sexual symptom is part of something larger.

Part 2 is a score two and a half points below a cutoff in a client who reports no distress, which is where most misuse of these instruments actually happens.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 25 minutes

1Seven questions
2The borderline score
3Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Nine instruments on the shelf and seven clinical questions. For each question, select every instrument you would actually use, then commit.
Some questions need two instruments, because functional measures do not capture distress and distress measures do not capture functioning.
One question needs none of them, and selecting nothing is the correct answer to it.
Part 2 is a score just below a cutoff in a client who is not distressed, which is where most misuse of these instruments happens.
Nothing is graded and nothing is recorded. Reloading starts it again.

The most common misuse of validated assessment measures in clinical practice is treating scale scores as diagnoses. A score is a psychometrically derived estimate of functioning in a defined domain. It informs clinical judgment and it does not replace it.

References

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