Testing Via The Internet: What About The Relationship?

    Computing Clinic (Rosen)
    • Psychological Testing on the Web by Eugene Aidman, PhD, 5/19/97
      • Standards! by Larry Rosen, 5/19/97

    Testing Via The Internet: What About The Relationship?
    by Mark H. Waugh, Ph.D., 5/19/97

    No doubt psychological testing services will emerge within the internet. It would seem crucially important for the protection of the public and the profession's integrity that standards be developed. I know the web is a domain where the "cowboy" spirit is alive and well, but when it comes to health services, prudence is importance.

    A concern I have about assessment via the internet is the loss of clinical information from the format. There is no substitute for several hours face to face with a trained, sensitive, observant, and empathic evaluator--both in acquiring meaningful data and in making the testing situation one in which the individual learns and benefits (i.e., is a therapeutic experience). Perhaps with greater development of interactive technology, including video links and more, the relational and interactional component of a comphrensive assessment may be captured. Of course, privacy standards would need to be foolproof in the use of the internet in these ways. And, I suspect that this would be a significant technical problem (I understand that in Silicon Valley there is effort underway to develop finger print based encryption lock and key systems, etc.). But, these very issues bring in concerns about larger, societal regulatory and control processes affecting individual privacy matters, as in, for example, health industry interest in data on individuals' records for profiling and all). There are technical, professional, and ethical issues that do need to be grappled with. Psychology as a profession, in my opinion, ought to be addressing this, but not be too quick to trade away privacy to commercialism (see Bollas' recent book on the mental health professions' relinquishing of their committment to the private and confidential nature of the psychotherapy realtionship).
          • Contol of Variables in Internet Testing. by T.C. Dunn, 5/25/97
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