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Assessment is critical to health service psychology and represents a core area of coverage during doctoral training. Despite this, training practices in assessment are understudied. Accordingly, this study utilized a national sampling of students (n = 534) enrolled in an American Psychological Association-accredited health service psychology doctoral program with substantive training in clinical or counseling psychology. We asked trainees to rate their competency for instruments in which they had training. We examined trends in training experiences, including both theory-based education and applied clinical opportunities, and explored differences in instrument training trends across program type (PhD/PsyD) and program discipline (clinical/counseling). Results of this study suggest a general convergence with professional practice trends in terms of instrument coverage, less clinical training, and exposure compared with didactic methods and generally small differences across program type and discipline in perceived competence and instrument exposure. Implications for training and education in psychological assessment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation surveyed students (n = 91) from 16 American Psychological Association accredited doctoral programs in clinical and counseling psychology about knowledge and training in personality assessment. We report self-perceived competency on specific instruments as well as training trends in coursework and instrument exposure in clinical settings. We also evaluate skill at interpretation on a popular personality instrument using two tasks, a narrative interpretation where trainees estimate an originating score profile using a standardized interpretive report and a symptom probability task where trainees predict the likelihood of symptoms based on a score profile. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) were the most frequently trained and utilized and had the highest self-perceived competence. When given interpretation tasks to evaluate assessment skills using the MMPI-2-RF, trainee performance was variable and discrepant from a comparison expert panel given the same tasks. Overall, our results suggest that there is a need for further, and more comprehensive, study on competence and training according to the experience of trainees. We note that there is variability across instruction on instrument use, exposure to instruments in practice, and practical skill level. We highlight our findings across four conceptual areas and discuss the implications for the observed trends: frequency of instrument exposure, trainee beliefs of competence, trainee interpretation skills, and reporting of testing interpretation. This pilot study provides the first evaluation of assessment training patterns as reported by health service psychology trainees. Results indicate that, in general, trainee instrument exposure and use mirror those of practicing psychologists; however, there is notable variability in how assessment results are reported and in trainee competency. Additional research evaluating health service psychology training should utilize student participants so that direct evaluations of competency and outcomes are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]