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Research indicates that clinical experience and level of training are strong predictors of whether psychologists and psychology students are able to develop an accurate diagnosis.

Research indicates that the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) is effective in identifying psychopathy syndrome in teenage boys that is consistent with research and theory on adult men. Studies were conducted on 115 teenage boys on probation.

Research on peer victimization in children indicates that multi-informant composite measures produce more accurate relational adjustment estimates than any one of the single-informant measures. Informants include self, peer, parent, and teacher. All informant data were found to be increasingly concordant and reliable over time.

A comparison of responses for the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist between English- and Spanish-speaking patients showed that the two versions are not fully equivalent, in that uniform differential item functioning was detected in six of 17 items. However, no bias at the composite scale score level was observed.

Studies reveal a significant association between Hare Psychopathy Checklist scores and the antisocial personality disorder criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders scored as a scale. The two are also similar in predicting violent behavior. This suggests that the same natural class underlies sets of items for both measures.

Studies indicate that several scales in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 are sufficiently accurate in distinguishing underreporting respondents from those who are responding honestly. Accuracy diminishes, however, if respondents have been informed about MMPI-2 validity scales.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) was applied to 1,558 Caucasian and 229 African American psychiatric inpatients, and the results were examined for ethnic differences and test bias. Although some MMPI-2 scales exhibited bias in underpredicting psychopathology in the African American patients, in the majority of applications the differences were minor and clinically insignificant.

An evaluation is presented on the Response Styles Questionnaire Rumination scale. Findings show that while rumination is linked to depression episode severity, it does not distinguish distinct clinical subtypes. Baseline rumination also does not predict main aspects of a depressive episode's six-month course and outcome.

An assessment is presented of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS-A), focusing on internal consistency, interrater agreement, and rater influence for the nonoverlapping subscales of resistance, psychological discomfort, positive symptoms and negative symptoms. The pros and cons of using BPRS-A are discussed.

The author defends the use of the Ego Impairment Index (EII) to assess thought disturbance and predict positive symptoms of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. The EII is a Rorschach measure of reasoning, perception and cognition.

The article examines specific issues surrounding self-reporting for mentally disabled persons. Topics include psychometric properties such as structure, format, and validity; question phrasing; response format such as multiple choice or acquiescence; and item content such as generalizations and quantitative judgments.

Research supports the validity of Spanish-language translations of questionnaires used to measure anxiety and related disorders. Assessments of validity involved the use of bilingual participants who answered English- and Spanish-language questionnaires and produced comparable results from both.

Research indicates that the pen switching method is preferable to the flowchart method in recording observations for the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) task, which is used to assess visual-spatial skills. Pen switching was found to be easier to score, and subjects evaluated by this method tended to perform better than their flowchart cohorts.

Research was conducted to examine the criterion-related validity of the psychopathic personality inventory (PPI) in a prison sample. The PPI and the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCR) were administered to a sample of 50 adult youthful offender prison inmates. Results are in agreement with a growing body of empirical data indicating that inflated perceptions of self-worth may classify a subgroup of criminal or delinquent offenders that are at risk of engaging in increased antisocial behavior and levels of violence.

Five experiments were performed to validate the TOMM, a newly developed visual recognition test that uses pictures of common objects as stimuli. Previous normative research with adults and neurologically impaired patients showed that TOMM possesses a high degree of specificity. Results from all experiments showed that scores on the TOMM are able to detect individuals that do not put forth maximum effort. Overall, the TOMM's high levels of sensitivity and specificity suggest that it could be a valid and useful test for detecting malingering of memory impairments.

The Hamilton Depression Inventory (HDI) is a newly developed paper-and-pencil version of the interview measure Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. This new self-report measure of depression severity comprises of a 23-item full form, a 17-item form and a nine-item short form. It is found to have high levels of reliability. Evidence is also found supporting the test's construct, content and criterion-related validity.

The Concept of the Object on the Rorschach is compared with the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scales. The two projective object representations measures are also compared with an intelligence test, a pathology test and a personality test, particular focus on the construct validity of the concept of object representations. Findings provide support for the validity of the construct and for the existence of an affective relationship between pathology and object representations.

A study conducted on 195 original samples of the Adaptive Category Test to analyze the reliability and validity of adaptive testing revealed that the cluster-branching methodology of adaptive testing was more accurate than the item response theory. The methodology proved to be appropriate when applied to long tests with a large range of obtainable scores. A cross-examination conducted on 55 participants to gauge the performance of ACat, an adaptive version of the Category Test, revealed that there were no significant differences between the scores.

The author critiques the validity inconsistency of the Ego Impairment Index (EII), a Rorschach measure of reasoning, perception and cognition. The author also points out that issues surrounding incremental validity are typically focused on predictive model coefficients, rather than degree of predictability specifically.