Clinical judgment survey of ment al-health professionals: I. An assessment of opinions, ratings, and knowledge

Abstract

A sample of mental health professionals listed in the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology was surveyed to examine attitudes with regard to the generalizability of findings from clinical judgment research, general beliefs and practices about clinical judgment, and knowledge of scholarly articles and books in the clinical judgment literature. Of the participants, 98.1% were doctoral‐level psychologists engaged in clinical practice. Results suggested that participants consistently agreed that tasks used in studies of clinical judgment were not representative of the types of activities performed in their clinical practice. Respondents believed that the study of clinical judgment was important and that research could have meaningful implications for their clinical practice. Participants' knowledge of the judgment literature was significantly lower than expected.

Clinical Reasoning in School Psychology

“…Moreover, Bramlett, Murphy, Johnson, Wallingsford, and Hall (2002) found that half of their sample of psychologists reported on their survey that they did not refer to research to inform their intervention practices. In addition, Nelson and Machek (2007) found from their survey of school psychologists that 56% of them felt their knowledge about evidence-based reading interventions is either “low” or “moderately low.” Moreover, a survey of a sample of mental health professionals listed in the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology (Rock, 1994) to examine attitudes with regard to the generalizability of findings from clinical judgment research, general beliefs and practices about clinical judgment, and knowledge of scholarly articles and books in the clinical judgment literature indicated that the respondents agreed that tasks used in studies of clinical judgment were not representative of the types of activities performed in their clinical practice and that although they believed that the study of clinical judgment was important and that research could have meaningful implications for their clinical practice, they reported low levels of familiarity with the judgment literature. Hence, more published exemplars of school psychologists’ use of science within their practice relative to assessment, intervention, and associated clinical reasoning might not only better represent how psychologists are enabled by science but also model an accountable and effective practice that appears somewhat absent or underrepresented within the published literature to date.…”

Reducing biases in clinical judgment with single subject treatment design.

“…Specifically, it is prudent for therapists to use the single subject treatment design because this mechanical prediction technology reduces the deleterious biases involved in using clinical judgment to make a diagnosis (of category or severity) and treat a clie nt's behavioral disorder. Many clinicians have little insight into how they make judgments in the clinical setting (Garb, 1998), and some critics argue that even when clinicians acknowledge that certain information is important, such information can have little influence on clinicians' judgments (Rock, 1994). Additionally, clinicians with many years of experience are usually not any more accurate than graduate students in clinical training (Dawes, 1989;Garb, 1998;Grove, Zald, Boyd, Snitz, & Nelson, 2000).…”