Assessment Tools in Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Evidence-based assessment (EBA) is defined as the use of standardized assessment tools that have research support for their psychometric properties (Jensen-Doss & Hawley, 2010). Assessment is a key aspect of the therapeutic process. It involves screening individuals who are at risk for a particular mental health concern, determining the severity of a given issue, and monitoring the effectiveness of treatment. EBA allows for best practice by providing empirically sound, valid, reliable measures of assessment. The broad areas of anxiety and depression represent extremely common disorders. Because of their high prevalence, evidence-based assessment tools catered toward depression and anxiety could be useful in primary care offices, inpatient clinics, and outpatient facilities. These measures take only minutes to complete and are easy to score and interpret. This reduces the strain on time and resources that longer, more complex measures would create. These instruments, along with many others, show that EBA is possible and plausible. The term “evidence-based” should not be reserved for treatment alone, but rather it should be integrated into all parts of the therapeutic process