Question: Why is standardized testing part of my child's psychological testing for depression?
Answer: Standardized testing can be an important tool in psychological testing for your child's depression.
The use of standardized tests for depression in children allows a professional to compare your child's symptoms to pre-set standards, which allows for a comparison of symptoms of your child and other developmentally similar children.
Standardized testing helps to determine a depression diagnosis and assess the severity of symptoms, which aid is selecting a safe and effective depression treatment.
Standardized testing has two main components:
- Standardized procedures attempt to ensure that the procedures for administering the test are uniform from one examiner and setting to another. This may include things like written instructions to be read to test takers.
- Standardization sample, or normative group, is a large group of people who represent the population for whom the test is intended. The standardization sample's scores on the test lead to the development of the scoring and interpretation guidelines for the test.
Sources:
Gary Groth-Marnat. The Handbook of Psychological Assessments, Fourth Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2003.
Robert J. Gregory. Psychological Testing: History, Principles, and Applications, 4th Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Group, Inc.; 2004.
