Assessment Tools in Counseling Psychology: A Study

In counseling psychology, there are many tools and therapeutic treatments including assessments to help the counseling process between the therapist and client. According to Hays (2013), “Assessment is beneficial in counseling because it provides information for both counselors and clients so they can understand and respond to the client concerns as well as plan and evaluate programs” (p. 6). Among the many assessments that are being used, there are evaluations focused on personalities, intelligence, abilities, and careers. In particular, personality assessments have flourished since the beginning of the 19th century, including the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Big Five Factor Personality Tests among many others. Not only are these

264). MBTI has four dimensions that help identify the manner in which people prefer to use their capacities for perception and judgement. The four dimensions include extraversion versus introversion (E-I), sensing or intuition (S-N), thinking or feeling (T-F), and judging or perceiving (J-P) (Hays, 2013). It is common for an extrovert to prefer to use their energy towards the outer world of people/things while introverts are the opposite. Furthermore, people who are “sensing” prefer to rely on their senses as their mode of perceiving while “intuitive” individuals rely on perception coming from the outside world. As for individuals who are considered “thinking or feeling” people, prefer to absorb data through either sensing or intuition. Lastly, “judging or perceiving” is a person’s preference for dealing with the external

With the convenience of these tests being accessible online, I was able to take them at a testing location of my choosing, which was my home without feeling the “test” pressure. The first test I took was based on the Big Five Factor Personality assessment known as the IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers. This test consisted of 50 statements, which I had to rate each one that best fit the truth about myself on a five point ordinal scale where 1=Disagree, 3=Neutral and 5=Agree. After the test was completed, a result summary was given indicating a raw score (a bell curve distribution) and a percentile score. The percentile score identified the percentage of other test takers who scored lower than I