An Investigation of Core Competencies in Psychological Assessment: Comparing the Evaluation between Interns and Supervisors

Abstract

心理衡鑑是心理師的核心能力，也是心理實務訓練的重要面向。本研究旨在瞭解實習臨床心理師的衡鑑能力與國內衡鑑能力的訓練現況。本研究樣本為三十對實習臨床心理師（簡稱「實習生」）與其實習機構督導之配對樣本。實習生與督導在全職實習初期與後期，使用「心理衡鑑能力評量表－全職實習版」評估實習生在「心理測驗學知識」、「衡鑑技巧」與「人際關係」的衡鑑能力，並提供他們對於國內心理衡鑑教育訓練現況的看法與建議。研究結果顯示實習生和督導皆認為實習生在「人際關係」的表現最佳，但在「心理測驗學知識」與「衡鑑技巧」則有待加強。督導們認為全職實習前實習生應具備心理測驗與病理診斷知識、衡鑑技巧，和人際互動等基本衡鑑知能，才能透過實習經驗將習得的衡鑑知能適切地應用於衡鑑實務工作中。囿於研究樣本較小且以身心醫學科為主，故研究結果較難推論至其他科別，有待後續研究進一步探討不同科別的衡鑑訓練狀況，以更完整地呈現衡鑑教育訓練的全貌。

Psychological assessment is one of the core competencies in professional psychology and an important training domain for clinical psychologists to function well in practice. The purposes of this study were (1) to measure psychological assessment competency (PAC) for master’s level interns and (2) to investigate the current psychological assessment education and training in Taiwan. Thirty dyads of clinical psychology interns and their supervisors were recruited as participants for the study. They were assessed with a questionnaire (including the internship version of the Psychological Assessment Competency Scale (PACS-I) and other questions) at the beginning and the end of internship. The PACS-I required both interns and supervisors to evaluate the interns’ competencies in psychological assessment. The PACS-I included 15 5-point Likert scale items grouped into three domains: knowledge of psychological testing, assessment skills, and interpersonal relationship. The results indicated that interns at the beginning of the internship considered themselves having the best performance on the interpersonal relationship domain, and their performance on the other two domains would require further enhancement. At the end of the internship, interns considered themselves to have significantly improved on all three PACS-I domains. A similar pattern was shown on supervisors’ post-internship PACS-I ratings of their interns in comparison to the pre-internship ones. To maximize the internship training effects, supervisors suggest that interns meet the following four basic competencies before entering internship: three PACS-I domains and knowledge of differential diagnosis. Due to the small sample size and most participants being recruited from the division of psychiatry in the hospital, the findings of this study may not generalize to other training sites.