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The Use of Psychological Testing for Treatment Planning and Outcomes Assessment (2nd edn) Edited by Mark E. Maruish London: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1999. 1507 pp. £200.00 (hb). ISBN 0 80582761 7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Michael Oddy*
Affiliation:
Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit, Ticehurst House Hospital, Ticehurst, Wadhurst, East Sussex TN5 7HU
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Abstract

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Copyright © 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

This large volume is divided into four sections. The first begins with three useful chapters on the use of psychological tests in psychiatric screening, treatment planning and outcome evaluation, respectively. The section also contains good chapters on statistical procedures for single case designs and for group data, and a rather pedestrian chapter providing guidelines for the selection of tests for planning treatment and assessing outcome.

The bulk of the book consists, not, as one might expect, of review of available instruments for use in different circumstances, but of chapter-by-chapter reviews of particular instruments. In themselves the chapters are a useful source of information concerning these tests. However, no rationale is provided for the choice of the instruments reviewed or the exclusion of alternatives. Some are obvious choices, such as the Beck scales and the immortal Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and Rorschach test. For others, I would have liked to have been convinced that these were the best available measures of their kind. From the point of view of a UK reader, the choice reflects the North American origins of the book and omits such widely used measures as the General Health Questionnaire. Another example is the assessment of marital satisfaction by means of the Snider and Aikman measures, whereas in the UK the Golombok—Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction is preferred. Interestingly, the only measure of British provenance is the Hamilton Depression Inventory, an Americanisation of Max Hamilton's standardised clinical interview published in 1960.

There is a loose structure to each chapter which involves a description of the development of standardisation, psychometric properties, uses and interpretation. Beyond this the editor appears to have left it to the discretion of individual authors. Some have included case examples, some problems and limitations.

A book of this size is unwieldy. Even if one accepts that it is unlikely to be anyone's choice of bedtime reading it is unnecessarily bulky, even as a reference work. Fewer and fewer people work with both children and adults and in my opinion the child and adult sections should have been separated into two volumes.

Its main use is likely to be as a source of information on a particular psychometric instrument, once one has identified it as a focus of interest and established, presumably through a database, that it has a chapter on the instrument in question.

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