You are the assessment coordinator at a couple and family therapy clinic. You have been assigned to create a comprehensive assessment protocol for every client (couple or family) who presents for services. Knowing that clients are often not transparent or forthcoming about matters of great potential consequence in their lives, what is crucial to ask every client who comes into the clinic?
- Choose several assessment instruments you believe would be useful and give a rationale for their inclusion. You may select or create individual items of interest as well. In order to limit response burden, you can ask 100 items/questions maximum over the assessment protocol.
- Justify the selection of the assessment instruments and questions for the assessment protocol.
- Include a discussion of ethics in assessment and the plan of how you would mitigate any potential issues guided by the AAMFT Code of Ethics.
- Analyze how safety concerns, personal beliefs, and social factors—for example, race, culture, sexual orientation, et cetera—can impact the assessment process.
Assignment Requirements
- Written communication: Written communication must be free of errors such that the overall message is clear.
- APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style.
- Number of resources: Minimum of eight scholarly resources (distinguished submissions will likely exceed that minimum).
- Length of paper: Five to six double-spaced, typed pages, excluding title and reference pages.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Resources THAT MUST BE USED
- American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (2015). AAMFT Code of Ethics. https://www.aamft.org//imis15/content/legal_ethics/code_of_ethics.aspx
- Boterhoven De Haan, K. L., & Zubrick, S. R. (2015). Reliability and validity of a short version of the General Functioning Subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device. Family Process, 54(1), 116–123.
- Burnette, C. E., & Billiot, S. (2020). The Family Resilience Inventory: A culturally grounded measure of current and family-of-origin protective processes in Native American families. Family Process, 59(2), 695–708.
- Carr, A., & Stratton, P. (2017). The SCORE family assessment questionnaire: A decade of progress. Family Process, 56(2), 285–301.
- O’Hanrahan, K., & Browne, S. (2016). Validation of 28 and 15 item versions of the SCORE family assessment questionnaire with adult mental health service users. Journal of Family Therapy, 39(1), 4–20.
- Olson, D. (2011). FACES IV and the Circumplex model: Validation study. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 37(1), 64–80. http://library.capella.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/846785339?pq-origsite=
- Pinsof, W. M., & Lebow, J. L. (2015). Confirming, validating, and norming the factor structure of Systemic Therapy Inventory of Change initial and intersession. Family Process, 54(3), 464–484.
- Skinner, H., & Sitarenios, G. (2000). Family Assessment Measure (FAM) and process model of family functioning. Journal of Family Therapy, 22(2), 190–210.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 1: Analyze the historical and theoretical basis for assessment methods, strategies, and techniques in marriage and family therapy.
- Justify selection of assessment instruments and questions for the assessment protocol.
- Competency 3: Apply ethical and legal issues related to assessments according to the appropriate marriage and family therapy standards.
- Include assessment methods to prevent or mitigate ethical and legal issues guided by the professional standards in the field.
- Competency 5: Apply assessment concepts for special populations as well as ethnic and culturally diverse populations.
- Analyze how safety concerns and personal beliefs, culture, and social factors can impact the assessment process.
- Competency 6: Communicate effectively through the appropriate application of grammar, punctuation, spelling, writing mechanics, and a professional tone, while adhering to current APA style and formatting.
- Communicate in a manner that is scholarly, professional and consistent with expectations for members of the family therapy profession.