Kr. Obyrne et Rk. Goodyear, CLIENT ASSESSMENT BY NOVICE AND EXPERT PSYCHOLOGISTS - A COMPARISON OF STRATEGIES, Educational psychology review, 9(3), 1997, pp. 267-278
This study examined the amount and type of information expert and novi
ce psychologists sought about a client to form their clinical impressi
ons. Novices (N = 14) were graduate students in psychology who reporte
d a mean of 1.8 years professional experience; experts (N = 14) were u
niversity counseling center psychologists with a mean of 13 years expe
rience and who were peer-nominated as experts. All were presented with
the same short description of a client and her presenting problem, th
en were to ask whatever questions they believed necessary to make an a
ssessment and treatment plan. Experts and novices did not differ with
respect to their confidence in their assessment. However compared to n
ovices, experts requested significantly more information (Ms of 23.1 v
s. 14.9 questions) and focused less on crisis aspects of the client si
tuation (56.5 vs. 64.4% of the questions).