Why Questionable Assessment Practices Remain Popular in School Psychology: Instructional Materials as Pedagogic Vehicles

Surveys reveal that many school psychologists continue to employ cognitive profile analysis despite the long-standing history of negative research results from this class of practice. This begets the question: why do questionable assessment practices persist in school psychology? To provide insight on this dilemma, this article presents the results of a content analyses of available interpretive resources in the clinical assessment literature that may shed insight on this issue. Although previous reviews have evaluated the content of individual assessment courses, this is the first systematic review of pedagogical resources frequently adopted in reading lists by course instructors. The interpretive guidance offered across tests within these texts was largely homogenous emphasizing the primary interpretation of subscale scores, de-emphasizing interpretation of global composites (i.e., FSIQ), and advocating for the use of some variant of profile analysis to interpret scores and score profiles. Implications for advancing evidence-based assessment in school psychology training and guarding against unwarranted unsupported claims in clinical assessment is discussed.

Why Questionable Assessment Practices Remain Popular in School Psychology: Instructional Materials as Pedagogic Vehicles

Surveys reveal that many school psychologists continue to employ cognitive profile analysis despite the long-standing history of negative research results from this class of practice. This begets the question: why do questionable assessment practices persist in school psychology? To provide insight on this dilemma, this article presents the results of a content analysis of available interpretive resources in the clinical assessment literature that may shed insight on this issue. Although previous reviews have evaluated the content of individual assessment courses, this is the first systematic review of pedagogical resources frequently adopted in reading lists by course instructors. The interpretive guidance offered across tests within these texts was largely homogenous emphasizing the primary interpretation of subscale scores, de-emphasizing interpretation of global composites (i.e., FSIQ), and advocating for the use of some variant of profile analysis to interpret scores and score profiles. Implications for advancing evidence-based assessment in school psychology training and guarding against unwarranted unsupported claims in clinical assessment is discussed.