This paper presents a psychological assessment case involving a client with a long history of depression who is considering returning to school to complete a four-year degree. Two standardized instruments — the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) — are examined in detail. For each instrument, the paper addresses test administration procedures, the normed population, the type of information yielded, and the reliability and validity of the tests when applied to diverse populations. The analysis provides a foundation for making informed recommendations about the client's cognitive capacity and psychological functioning relative to her academic goals.
The client has a history of mental health issues and has been taking antidepressant medication for her depressed mood. She has been receiving mental health services for the past 17 years due to reported mood swings. Ms. Z underwent electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) three years ago; however, her depressive mood persists. The client would like to return to school and complete her four-year degree, but she fears she might not be able to do so given her history of mental health concerns. She has been referred so that her cognitive ability and the severity of her condition can be determined. Before committing to a four-year degree, the client wants recommendations regarding her ability to focus on coursework and her chances of completing the program without significant difficulty. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) are used to evaluate the client's cognitive ability and the severity of her condition.
The WAIS-IV is administered by a professional psychologist who holds a C-level qualification (Abdelhamid et al., 2021). The tests are complex and require extensive training to administer appropriately. Administration of the WAIS-IV subtests relies on the discontinue rule: because the tests increase in difficulty, the discontinue rule is designed to minimize testing time. If a client obtains a score of zero on a set number of consecutive items, there is no need to continue, since the client is unlikely to complete the remaining scale items successfully. The administrator must be careful not to apply the discontinue rule incorrectly, particularly when the subtests are not properly ordered. If needed, the test can be administered across two or more sessions to ensure that the initial results contain no errors.
The test is designed for adult populations aged 16 to 90. The WAIS-IV was extended to include individuals up to 90 years old because people are now living longer than before. The test is designed to be taken by anyone regardless of sex, race, religion, education level, or geographic location. The ongoing review process improves the test and makes it more accommodating for a wide range of people. Including diverse groups in the norming process makes the test broadly applicable and suitable for global use. The test developers also aimed to reduce the overall administration time to make it more accessible — particularly for older adults, who tend to have shorter attention spans (Valentine et al., 2020). Reducing administration time also helps address increased caseloads for psychologists.
The test yields information about how the brain functions following injury or mental health concerns. The WAIS-IV can be used to identify the presence of a specific learning disability when a person scores markedly higher in some areas than in others. Results center on two primary measures: Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ) and the General Ability Index (GAI) (Valentine et al., 2020). FSIQ refers to a person's overall cognitive capacity and reflects the test taker's ability to study and sustain focus. GAI provides information on the individual's ability to process information. For older test takers, processing speed data is especially important. Information about a person's working memory and its impact on daily tasks can also be derived from the test.
The test is designed and normed for diverse populations; therefore, its reliability and validity are not expected to differ substantially when administered to varying groups. The revision incorporated into the WAIS-IV ensured that the test was inclusive and covered a diverse population representative of the United States. The norming sample included all major demographic subgroups of the U.S. population, making the test reliable and valid across a wide range of test takers.
"MMPI-2 eligibility, format, clinical scales, and scoring overview"
"MMPI-2 diversity, personality data yielded, and validity limitations"
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