Abstract

BARRIO GANDARA, Victoria del. Specific Problems in Child Assessment. Clínica y Salud [online]. 2009, vol.20, n.3, pp.225-236. ISSN 2174-0550.

This paper starts from the basic identity of adult and child assessment in terms of the assessment process, psychometric features and the deontological requirements. Nevertheless, differences are also taken into account, based on the diversity of the subject to be assessed.  The child and the teenager are beings featuring an on-going change owing to their physical and emotional immaturity –an essential difference vis-á-vis the adults. Among these characteristics, age (ranking the stages of change), dependence (calling for the adult presence in the process) and plasticity (threatening the stability of assessment) stand out. These three characteristics bring about a new problem for the child evaluator, co-morbidity, which is more frequent in children than in adults and poses an additional problem for diagnosis.  Finally, strategies to face all these problems are addressed.

Keywords : child and adolescent psychological assessment; age problems; dependency; plasticity; co-morbidity.

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