Antiracist Psychological Assessment: Acknowledging the Harmful History and Moving Toward a More Inclusive, Equitable Process

This webinar describes ways to incorporate antiracist practices throughout the assessment process and offers suggestions for how to teach and promote such practices in training programs. Antiracist practice involves a constant series of choices toward equity at the individual, interpersonal, and institutional level. Racism is, unfortunately, part of the history of psychological assessment. As such, the assessment process and its outcomes have resulted in harm to people of color. A crucial part of moving toward antiracist practices in psychological assessment is understanding the role and impact of racism in the history of assessment and taking active steps to change the assessment process. This program will offer a historicized perspective on the detrimental effects of psychological assessment in order to frame the need for intentional efforts toward antiracist assessment practices among assessors and educators. The presenters will focus on assessment of children, how school-based psychological practice influences the racial disparities we see in schools, and the ways in which test construction is moving toward antiracism. The webinar will also include information on how to evaluate a measure for use with clients of different racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Describe two ways psychological assessment has harmed outcomes for people of color.
• Explain three ways to incorporate antiracist methods of psychological assessment in their practice and/or teaching.
• Discuss methods to increase inclusivity in test development.
• Describe methods to evaluate test appropriateness for a given population.

Qualification Level Required: A

Instructional Level: Intermediate

Target Audience: Clinical psychologists, educational diagnosticians, psychologists, school psychologists, teachers