ABSTRACT
The first six chapters introduced psychometric concepts and methods of analyzing mea sures that contribute to the scientific foundations of clinical assessment. We discussed the evolution of the concept of construct validity and the meaning and importance of psychometric dimensions such as temporal stability, internal consistency, content validity, convergent and discriminant validity, construct validity, and factor structure. We discussed the importance of these dimensions of psychometric evidence for the judgments and decisions made by the clinician-judgments about diagnosis, clinical case formulation, and treatment process and outcome evaluation. All dimensions of psychometric evidence are important when developing, selecting, applying, and interpreting clinical assessment instruments and the mea sures derived from them. In this chapter, we consider more closely an additional aspect of the scientific foundations of clinical assessment: the conditional nature of the psychometric evidence.
