CACREP standard 7 assessment requirements for counseling programs

CACREP Standards Regarding Assessment

CACREP requires counseling programs to adhere to a set of standards in assessing the progress of their students, both professionally and academically. They are required to:

CACREP 7(a): assess the student's knowledge of the history, meaning, and nature of assessment practices and instruments. This would be crucial in helping them understand how assessment instruments were misused in the past, and consequently, how they could avoid similar blunders in their future practice. A student could increase their knowledge of the same through reading relevant text books or visiting sites such as the American Psychiatric Association for information on the valid use of instruments such as the DSM-IV-TR.

CACREP 7(b): assess the student's understanding of basic assessment tests and techniques, including behavioral observations, psychological testing, as well as group and individual tests. These skills could best be enhanced through actual practice in the form of internships, attachments, or voluntary practice, which give the learner the opportunity to respond to real-life cases and at the same time gain practical know-how by interacting with more experienced assessors in actual practice.

CACREP 7 (c): assess the student's understanding of statistical concepts including correlations, distributions, measures of central tendency, and scales of measurement. Knowledge on, for instance, the nature of distributions, would help the learner understand the prevalence of some crucial constructs, or certain learning disabilities among their students, should they settle for the educator role. The best way to sharpen their knowledge on this area is to carry out practical research studies, where they collect data from their population of interest, analyze the same, and then present the results in the form of histograms, graphs or tables. Relevant textbooks can then be consulted for information on how the results can be interpreted using different statistical measures.

CACREP 7(d): assess the student's understanding of the concept of reliability (which measures the extent to which the findings of a study remain consistent with repeated measurements), as well as their knowledge on the various methods of enhancing reliability. This kind of knowledge could be obtained through reviewing past studies and examining the instruments used to measure different constructs by more experienced researchers in the same. It could go a long way in helping them develop their own effective and reliable measuring instruments.

CACREP 7(e): assess the learner's understanding of the concept of validity, which measures the extent to which a test instrument measures exactly what it is intended to measure, as well as their knowledge on other relevant concepts. Just as is the case with reliability, the learner can enhance their knowledge on validity by reviewing the measuring instruments used in past studies documented in peer-reviewed journals.

CACREP 7(f): assess the student's understanding of the cultural and social factors related to the evaluation and assessment of populations, groups, or individuals. Different cultures have different values and perceptions, and have to be treated using different assessment and evaluation techniques. In order to identify techniques that would best suit a particular culture or group, a student would have to interact with assessors from different cultural backgrounds so as to learn how to best deal with populations, groups, or individuals from such groups.