In: Psychology
How would you describe behavioural assessment methods? What do you believe are common errors that can occur in this type of assessment?
Behavioral assessment includes measurement of those variables which causes a behavior or can bring changes in the behavior of a person. The factors affecting the behavior may be from within the person or from outside environment. It measures or describes the activities of the person rather than assessing his personality. This is a statistical methods intended to design behavioral therapies to correct behavioral problems.
There are a number of methods for behavioral assessment such as naturalistic behavioral assessment, analogue behavioral assessment, behavioral rating scales, self monitoring etc. Electronic equipments are used to measure psycho physiological factors such as heart rate, rate of blinking of eye etc. Using these measurement methods, each client has to be assessed so that an appropriate treatment measure can be developed. The variables that make the behavioral changes are identified and responses to these variables are measured. In this way the clinical researcher gets appropriate tool to make interventions in the behavior.
An important factor that has to be mentioned here is the correctness of the methods. The behavioral change may be the result of a variety of factors, including family history, childhood events, physiological conditions, environments etc. These factors may act independently and sometimes they may interact also. It will vary among individuals and in one individual it will vary with age. So understanding the correct variable that cause the behavioral change is a very difficult task, which may be sometimes erroneous. Only by studying a multitude of case models it is possible to understand the variables that affect the behavior.
Thus it can be seen that behavioral assessment is a method by which the behavior are assessed and measured using different methods so as to develop an appropriate to tool to treat behavioral problems. But the behavioral problems may be result of multitude of reasons, and it will vary with individuals. One model developed for a particular person will not be suitable for another person. So the chances of errors have to be reduced as far as possible while interventions in behavior are made.