Authored: Leonard Educational Evaluations, LLC.
Leonard Educational Evaluations, LLC., provides psychological, educational, neuropsychological, and independent educational evaluations for children, college students, adults, school districts, colleges, and organizations throughout NJ and PA. For more information, please contact Leonard Educational Evaluations at 267-702-6328, Info@LeonardEvaluations.com or http://www.LeonardEvaluation.com
THE PURPOSE OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION
The purpose of a psychological evaluation is to pinpoint what is happening in someone's life that may be inhibiting their ability to perform, think, behave, feel, or achieve in more appropriate or constructive way either at home, school, or the workplace. There are many types of psychological evaluations that are used for personal insight, performance in school or college, or for workplace performance. The psychologist will administer and interpret the results and be able to determine what, if any, diagnoses, disorder, or disabilities you may or may not have; as well as indicate your relative strengths and weaknesses. This information is used to provide recommendations, interventions, and treatment options for the client.
Leonard Educational Evaluations' Psychological Evaluation is completed by highly skilled and experienced clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, licensed psychologists, and/or certified school psychologists. Our comprehensive evaluations will address the reason for referral and identify what issues are creating obstacles and determine the best remediation and interventions to address it in school, at home, and in the community.
HOW CAN IT CAN HELP
If you or a family member have been referred or considering a psychological evaluation, please read some of the information below. It may help guide you in the best direction. Psychological evaluations are designed to help you. Think of it as going to your primary physician/doctor when you are not feeling well. You tell the doctor how you are not feeling well. They may do some formal or informal testing (take your temperature, ask you some questions, take a blood test, etc.), and then determine what your diagnosis is (e.g. flu) and then provide treatment (e.g. cough medicine). A psychological evaluation is very similar in that they are addressing cognitive, academic, social, emotional, behavioral, adaptive, personality, and mental health issues that creating road blocks for you in your life.
A psychological evaluation helps determine what the underlying issue is for the client and how best to resolve it. For example, if a student is struggling in math class. Is it due to a learning disability in math or dyscalculia? Perhaps it could be ADD - ADHD or Executive Functioning weaknesses; or there could be environmental conditions with family, friends, or colleagues that are causing significant stress and having an impact on memory? Psychological tests and assessments allow a psychologist to understand the nature of the problem, and to figure out the best way to go about addressing it.
YOU CAN GET A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION IF YOU ARE HAVING:
BENEFITS OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION
STEPS INVOLVED IN A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION
Psychological Tests and Assessments
Psychologists pick and choose tests that are individualized and appropriate for each person based on the reason for referral, symptoms, and other important information (vision, hearing, language, etc.) Both tests and assessments help a psychologist determine strengths, weaknesses, including diagnoses and recommendations to treat or remediate it. Our examiners only use the most updated versions of tests, with the highest reliability and validity rates with appropriately normed samples.
Testing can involve the use of formal tests (also referred to as standardized or norm-referenced tests) and informal tests (also referred to as criterion reference tests). Formal tests compare your results to other individuals (in terms of age, grade level, etc...) and indicate how you performed average, below average, or above average when compared to others. Examples of Formal tests include the following:
Informal tests indicate how well you have mastered the content or knowledge on the test. There are also information gathering forms, questionnaires, checklists, and input that is based on your opinion or opinions of others, which is extremely valuable as well. Together this information helps paint a picture of obstacles that you are encountering.
What to Expect in a Psychological Evaluation
The psychologist will try to collect as much pertinent information possible through various techniques (e.g. review of records, interviews, observations, testing and assessments) and then help paint a picture of how and possibly why you are struggling and how best to remediate it. You can not study or prepare for psychological evaluations. The best way is to just be yourself, try your best, and be open and honest. The information you receive can help you in ways never imagined!
How to Interpret Psychological-Educational Test Scores
It's important that client's do not interpret test scores by themselves because it can be easily misinterpreted on many levels. Therefore, it is very important that you contact your doctor or specialist who completed the evaluation for appropriate interpretation in your specific case. However, from a mathematical and statistical point of view, we hope this general information can provide some assistance:
Raw Scores: is the amount of points earned for a subtest and can not be meaningfully compared. Example John has a raw score of 35. This means the student earned 35 points on a subtest.
Standard Scores: Relates a student’s performance to a normative reference group and allows one to compare scores within a test…Standard scores indicate how far above or below the average (the mean) an individual score falls, using a common scale, such as one with an average of 100. Standard scores also take variance into account, or the degree to which scores typically will deviate from the average score. It can be used to compared individuals from different grades or age groups because all scores are converted to the same numerical scale. For example, each test has different ranges of scores and can label them differently. Usually, but not always, one reliable factor is that most tests have a mean of 100 with a standard deviation of 15; suggesting that (85-100 and 100-115 are average)
Scaled Scores: Relates a student’s performance to a normative reference group and allows one to compare scores within a subtest…Performance on each subtest which reflects specific skills results in a scaled score…For example, Scaled Scores can have range from 1-19 with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3. 7-13 (average range) like the WISC-V
Percentile Scores: Should be used when needed to compare student’s performance to others using a hypothetical situation involving 100 students. It can be provided for each standard score to indicate a student’s standing relative to other students at the same age or grade level. For example, Percentile ranks range from 1 to 99 with 50 as the median. A student with a 15th percentile means that the student scored at or better than 15% of students his same age (or perform lower than 85% of students same age).
Stanine Scores: Should be used when a broad gauge of achievement is needed, but are useless for reflecting precise information. Score that results from a conversation of a grade-based or age-based standard score to a 9-point scale. For example, Stanines are normalized scores ranging from 1 to 9, with a mean of 5 and standard deviation of 2. The lowest (1-3), middle (4-6), and highest (7-9).
Z-Scores: Is a measure of the number of standard deviation units away from the test mean. The test mean is 0.0 and the standard deviation is 1.0. A positive sign means above the mean and a negative sign means below the mean. For example, knowing that someone’s weight is 150 pounds might be good information, but if you want to compare it to the “average” person’s weight, looking at a vast table of data can be overwhelming (especially if some weights are recorded in kilograms). A z-score can tell you where that person’s weight is compared to the average population’s mean weight
T-Scores: The T-Score was designed to eliminate confusion of z-scores and provide a consistent mean and standard deviation; the T-score transformation takes raw scores and changes them to equal interval units, where the mean is 50, and the standard deviation is 10…It’s another type of standardized score, where 50 is average; Example, used to summarize student performance, pretest performance subtracted from the posttest performance, identify a student’s real position in the distribution.
Grade Equivalent: The score is more reflective of accuracy level than the grade level of task difficulty that this student can perform. In other words, the student has obtained the same score (not skills) as an average student of that grade. Expresses the student’s performance developmentally in terms of a corresponding grade level to the nearest tenth, which correspond to academic months. For example, if Sally obtains a grade equivalent of 3.6 on a reading comprehension test, this means that the student obtained the same score as the typical student in the sixth month of third grade. Sally may or may not have acquired the same skills as the typical third grader. Another way of looking at it is that it means that the student answered correctly a high percentage of the items on a third grade test…the same percentage of items that an average sixth-grade student answered correctly on the third grade test. It does not reflect their ability.
Age Equivalent: Express the student’s performance developmentally in terms of a corresponding age level. For example, if Sally obtains a age equivalent of 10.6 on a reading comprehension test, this means that the student obtained the same score as the typical 10 year, 6 month old peer. Sally may or may not have acquired the same skills as a 10.6 year old. Another way of looking at it is that it means that the student answered correctly a high percentage of the items that most 10.6 year old’s did…the same percentage of items that an average 10.6 year old student answered correctly. It does not reflect their ability.
Standard Deviation: Is the standardized difference among scores around the mean of the distribution. In others words, the extent to which scores are dispersed on a test.
Confidence Interval: A student’s performance can vary any given day, the confidence interval is the hypothetical range of scores predicted if your child were given this test 100 times. A 95% confidence interval means there is a 95% likelihood that your child would score in the given range if administered the test 100 times.
Normal Curve Equivalents: The NCE converts scores into a scale interpretable as percentiles based on equal intervals. It ranges from 1-99, with a mean of 50. It helps us describe performance with the interpretability of percentile ranks and the power of standard scores, which allows a more sophisticated analysis.