Psychological assessment has been a defining area of practice, training, and research for professional psychologists since the field's inception. We conducted the present survey of professional psychologists as a follow-up to surveys conducted by the American Psychological Association in the 1990s to describe (a) current psychological assessment practices and trends; (b) demographic factors and beliefs associated with assessment use; (c) barriers discouraging assessment use; and (d) factors that may encourage psychologists to make assessments a larger part of their practices. Our survey supports the common perception that, in general, assessment represents a smaller part of the practices of professional psychologists than before managed care; however, for psychologists in some specialty areas and settings (e.g., forensic psychology, inpatient settings), assessment represents a significant portion of their work. Moreover, the large majority of psychologists believe psychological assessment is a valuable aid in making diagnostic decisions and treatment recommendations. Many psychologists identify that greater coverage by third-party payers, as well as having access to less costly assessment instruments, would enable greater use of assessment.

There is currently a need to identify feasible and effective interventions to help older individuals suffering from memory loss maintain functional independence and quality of life. To improve upon paper and pencil memory notebook interventions, the Digital Memory Notebook (DMN) application (app) was developed iteratively with persons with cognitive impairment. In this paper we detail a manual-based intervention for training use of the DMN app. A series of three case studies are described to illustrate the clinical process of the DMN intervention, the key components of the intervention and participants' perceptions of the intervention. The Reliable Change Index was applied to pre/post intervention scores that examined everyday memory lapses, daily functioning, coping self-efficacy, satisfaction with life, and quality of life with standardized measures. Following the intervention, two of three participants self-reported a clinically significant reduction in everyday memory lapses and improved everyday functioning. One participant reported clinically significant change in quality of life. All participants demonstrated clinically significant changes in their ability to cope with problems and build self-efficacy. Furthermore, all participants scored in the normative range post-intervention on the measure of satisfaction with life. Clinical observations and participant feedback were used for refinement of the DMN intervention (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03453554).

The Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) includes validity scales that assess Deviant Responding (DR), Virtuous Responding, and Inconsistent Responding. We examined the utility of these scales for identifying careless responding using data from two online studies that examined correlates of psychopathy in college students (Sample 1: N = 583; Sample 2: N = 454). Compared with those below the cut scores, those above the cut on the DR scale yielded consistently lower validity coefficients when PPI-R scores were correlated with corresponding scales from the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. The other three PPI-R validity scales yielded weaker and less consistent results. Participants who completed the studies in an inordinately brief amount of time scored significantly higher on the DR and Virtuous Responding scales than other participants. Based on the findings from the current studies, researchers collecting PPI-R data online should consider identifying and perhaps screening out respondents with elevated scores on the DR scale.

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Traditional mandated community service (CS) typically consists of picking up trash or performing manual labor, distanced from the community. Some juvenile justice programs have begun to implement restorative community service (RCS) programs that enable youth to complete meaningful CS projects in a shame-free manner alongside community members. This study compared RCS with a standard community service (SCS) program in two counties in Washington State on psychosocial outcomes, including attitudes, peer relationships, school conduct, academic performance, and substance use. Recidivism was also examined. RCS was associated with reduced substance use and fewer school conduct difficulties compared with SCS, and also positively influenced peer relationships and attitudes. These findings suggest that adding a restorative component to CS may improve psychosocial outcomes for justice-involved youth, but there was no evidence that adding a restorative component to CS led to reduced recidivism. Additional systematic studies are needed to determine whether these findings replicate.